Hope and encouragement, especially hope, is probably one of the greatest things you can give another person.
Becky Hammon
I'm up for challenges. I'm up for being outside the box, making tough decisions and challenges... And I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie.
I can't open doors that aren't open. But if a door opens, I would be happy to walk through.
The last reason I want to be hired is because of my gender. I want to be hired because you trust me, because of my potential, because you believe that I know basketball, and we go and we build from there.
If you could play in the Olympics or sit on your couch and watch at home, what would you do? It was that simple. This is basketball; it's not war.
It's one thing to watch the NBA, but when you have to be there for every film session, every practice, it's a grind. It's a lot of hard work.
It's 2015, and I'm the first female coach in any of the major sports. That's ridiculous!
I know who I am. When you get comfortable with yourself like that and you know you're doing the right thing, you can take a lot of crap.
Your mind is just constantly moving, thinking of different scenarios, not only on your team but their team too, trying to figure out things they are doing.
I was living my dream as a WNBA player.
If I went to play for Lithuania or Latvia, no one would have talked about it.
You shouldn't get into coaching unless you care about the people you're leading.
Let's just face it: The average girl is not 6-3. I look very average.
You're getting to know these guys as people, and as players. You have to develop a rapport. They give me a lot of respect.
You have those people speaking really good things in your life and it grows and produces fruit later on. But somebody had to initially plant those good seeds.
I was always smaller and slower than everybody else, so I had to figure out other ways to be successful. Some people can survive on their athleticism; I had to survive on my brain.
Playing basketball for me is like breathing.
And a pick and roll in the women's game is a pick and roll on the men's game... I mean, character, working for each other - trusting your teammates. That stuff, that's universal.
Nothing in my life has really ever been easy. I've always been someone who did it uphill.
People ask me all the time, will there ever be a woman player in the NBA? To be honest, no. There are differences. The guys are too big, too strong and that's just the way it is.
I... scout, I'm in all the film sessions, I'm in all the coaches meetings, I travel... I'm in on everything.
I was always with my dad and my brother. I know that if you can't keep up, you get left behind. So you learn to pull your weight. You learn to not be the one that's causing the problems, whether we're camping, where I'd better be the one to help put up the tent.
I just think there's a real art in listening. I need to listen.
The greatest thing about sports, to me, is just the crossover into everyday life.
But, at the end of the day, you live in the world with billions of people, and everyone has a unique upbringing and experience.
But I think in the midst of working, you can't get too crazy serious.
But when it comes to things of the mind, things like coaching, game-planning, coming up with offensive and defensive schemes, there's no reason why a woman couldn't be in the mix and shouldn't be in the mix.
My whole childhood I grew up wanting to be a professional basketball player.
I had a fantastic career. I loved being a professional athlete.
I grew up in the woods; we were either on three-wheelers or four-wheelers or we were playing basketball.
It's not that I set out to say, 'I'm going be the first assistant coach in the NBA.' That really - it was never my intent. It just kind of happened very naturally.
I feel like I've had 20 years of experience at a very high level, if you throw in college, playing overseas, I've played in hundreds and hundreds of games.
I think it's kind of silly, actually... I've been coached by men the majority of my career. It hasn't ever been an issue. They have never walked in on us. So I don't - I think it's a nonissue when you really reverse the conversation.
If you don't want a female coach, don't hire one!
It's just really awesome to be rewarded for all your hard work; that people take notice of how I treated my teammates, how I was in my community.
But really, I've worked my whole life to become a great basketball player. When I see that jersey go up, I'm sure I'm gonna have flashbacks to when I was 4 and 5 years old playing in my driveway because I loved it. I still love it to this day. It's been one of my first loves in life: basketball.
But it's been a learning experience; learning the NBA, learning the travel schedule and certain coaches, their styles, what they like to run out of timeouts, personnel, tendencies.
For me, I think it's such a notable point to make that a leader had to believe, a leader had to see that potential.
