Is the NBA ready for a Female Head Coach?

[Street Knowledge]

ESPN - Dream Role - E-ticket

Nakase has spent the past few years coaching professional basketball overseas -- coaching men who tower over her -- and the 32-year-old California native earns a living in the offseason by training kids and college players. She doesn't have to be here today, submitting to this torture with Watson, a veteran NBA point guard, and Knight, a shooting guard who plays abroad. But all three friends are chasing something, an intangible edge that comes with pushing the limits.

In September, Nakase began a yearlong internship with the Los Angeles Clippers. She works for the team's video coordinator, in the same kind of NBA entry-level position once held by Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, Los Angeles Lakers coach Mike Brown and Portland Trail Blazers assistant Kaleb Canales. (There has been only one woman in NBA history to work as a video coordinator: Trish McGhee, who was laid off by the Memphis Grizzlies because of the lockout of 2011.)

Natalie Nakase wants to be the first female coach in the NBA. And when you're trying to do something never before done, you must first understand all of the reasons you might not succeed.


The NBA possesses more of a herdlike mentality than it cares to admit. Just look at the analytics revolution that is sweeping the league. A few teams -- the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks and Oklahoma City Thunder -- had success making decisions based on new statistical formulas, and the rest are now scurrying to catch up, hiring their own numbers guys.

Daryl Morey Houston Rocket GM: All NBA teams want to be ahead of the curve, but few can afford the risk. It's always easier when you have one example to point to, so when you take that idea to your owner, you can say, 'See, it worked here.' Nobody wants to be the first." This mentality is one reason women aren't being hired as NBA coaches -- because no team has done it yet. The league loves to recycle, with teams routinely installing coaches and general managers who've been hired and fired multiple times. But I find it hard to believe that all of the best and smartest thinkers in basketball just happen to share the same chromosome.

 

[Captain Crunch]

 

[Constellations]

she'd probably be better than del negro

 

[bewitched]

She makes sense men can coach women's teams but women cannot coach a team of men?

 

[Street Knowledge]

Another excerpt

The topic of women coaching in the NBA has surfaced from time to time. But in years past, the only woman mentioned with any seriousness was longtime Tennessee women's coach Pat Summitt, the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history, male or female. In other words, only a woman with Summitt's credentials could be deemed capable of coaching men. At the same time, this theoretical moment -- "Female To Coach NBA Team!" -- is invariably portrayed as a splashy, front-page kind of move, a socio-cultural experiment doubling as a marketing ploy, like a scene from the movie "Eddie" with Whoopi Goldberg, who plays a super fan plucked from the rafters of Madison Square Garden and inserted as coach of the New York Knicks.

The problem with these scenarios is they never account for the possibility that a behind-the-scenes player will rise up to steal the show. The NBA's first female coach probably won't be a Big Name hired as a publicity stunt. She will, more than likely, be someone like Nakase: an obsessively determined woman willing to start on the bottom rung of the NBA ladder, no matter how many people advise her that more opportunity exists in the women's game.

 

[BrothaZay]

She'll get less respect than Mike Brown

 

[boskey]

She'll get less respect than Mike Brown

 

[#1 pick]

Her dad look like a master from Karate Kid.

 

[Street Knowledge]

Her dad look like a master from Karate Kid.

 

[Strapped]

Nah,to many naked men in the locker room might distract her

 

[YaThreadFloppedB!]

As a man... a woman cant inspire me.

Nor screaming " Get back on D!!" at me in a high pitched voice motivate me

EDIT: Maybe gimme that D

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

As a man... a woman cant inspire me.

Nor screaming " Get back on D!!" at me in a high pitched voice motivate me

This is it in a nutshell. A women won't have what it takes to inspire men or know what to say to motivate them(to play inspired B-Ball that is). Also, she would have to put up with me intentionally talking to her with my dikk and balls out in the locker room on the daily.

She aint gon be built for all that. They trying they best to put women on the same level as men I see

 

[big bun]

Good luck to her. A good coach is a good coach no matter if it's a man or woman.

 

[Leonard Washington]

Her dad look like a master from Karate Kid.

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

Good luck to her. A good assistant coach is a good assistant coach no matter if it's a man or woman.

Cleared that up for ya my man