Some sports history was made last month but barely registered on a national sports level. Basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman was hired last month as the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks' affiliate in the NBA Development League. She will begin coaching in November 2010, when the team officially takes the court.
Her hiring is a major achievement in terms of gender equality in sports. Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Mavericks Development team is a step away from the NBA so she will be the first female to coach professional male basketball players in recent history. Certainly, Lieberman's resume and basketball acumen have led to her being hired as she is considered one of the greatest female basketball players in history. But will she be able to handle the egos of young men who have dreams of reaching the NBA? It helps that Lieberman has already had some experience making history when it comes to interacting with men in basketball.
While Lieberman's progress in coaching men will be intriguing to watch, it also brings to mind if the most accomplished female basketball coach in history could be successful coaching men. Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt has accomplished virtually everything in her sport from national championships to becoming the all time wins leader in Division I history for both men and women's basketball. Should the right opportunity present itself, it would be interesting to see if Pat Summitt could coach men's collegiate basketball at a good program. Her passion and desire for coaching basketball is well documented and she wouldn't be afraid to let her voice be heard to any young man who didn't execute plays correctly.
The unknown in the cases of both Pat Summitt and Nancy Lieberman coaching men is whether young men, many of which would be young African-American men, will respond in productive ways to women coaching, criticizing, and at times commanding them on the basketball court. The men will respect both coaches basketball knowledge but it takes more than knowledge to be successful as a coach. Nancy Lieberman's coaching success in 2010 could have an effect on whether we see another female become head coach of a men's team on a national level for some time.
Comments
Thanks Mark for bring this to our attention. Good info.
Mark good article on gender equality in sports. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."
Nancy Lieberman's now have her opportunity to demostrated this.
In the words of Dr. Martin King she must do well,"If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well."
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