Knicks aren't fooling anyone with Dawn Staley update

Did you know Dawn Staley, head coach of the University of South Carolina women’s basketball program, was interviewed by the Knicks to be their head coach? Did you know she “impressed?” Did you know she’s not getting hired?

This is an echo. This is the New York Knicks doing Portland Trail Blazer or Toronto Raptor cosplay.

Do you remember Becky Hammon? I hope you do. If not, she is the head coach of the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA. Before she took that position, she was an assistant under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio. She was one of the first female assistants in the NBA.

Despite that only appearing as a novelty to some fans, Popovich and players routinely praised her. For years, her name would come up in regard to various head coaching vacancies. She was brought in for consideration plenty of times, would always seem to be praised in regard to her interview, and then, without fail, someone different would be hired.

I cannot speak for team fit, her coaching acumen in detail (though winning two WNBA championships is a good indicator there), or how the actual interviews went, but after a few instances of her being brought in as a candidate and the team interviewing her then making a deal of their candidate pool, her inclusion started to seem like a gimmick.

“Look how forward thinking we are! We might, and I hope you’re sitting down for this, hire a woman!”

There was no deviation from this playbook. Becky is so amazing and super cool, we couldn’t NOT bring her in for an interview! Becky did so, so good in the interview! Didn’t we tell you she was the best?! Anyway, we’re going to hire Chauncey Billups.

I fear Dawn Staley’s interview process was another one of these PR charades

Charade may not be the right word. Maybe a skit that the New York Knicks are playing on an unsuspecting coaching candidate. Maybe a prank. I don’t know. It’s just so familiar.

“Despite Staley impressing during the conversation, she is currently not considered a finalist.”

Then what are we even doing here? Dawn Staley’s track record as an athlete and a coach is about as tight as it gets for someone who has dedicated their life and their passion to women’s sports. She has multiple NCAA championships, an undefeated season last year, players who fervently and without prompting praise her leadership and acuity. I’m not one who can judge if Dawn is a better candidate than Becky, but she is certainly a more established and realized commodity as a head coach.

What I’m saying is, if the Knicks brought in Dawn Staley as a candidate, they knew exactly who they were bringing in. There are various ways that interview could have gone. It could have gone poorly, but reportedly it did not. She impressed. She did better than they thought she would do.

She is not a finalist.

I do not care to understand a world where this story gets told over and over with no variation on the ending. People who think women can’t coach in the NBA are at best idiots and at worst terrible people masking their masculine insecurities by trying to gate keep invisible lines around what’s meant to be an inviting communal activity.

I don’t know what to tell you. You can read this study if you want. You want someone who is smart, hungry, and dedicated. That isn’t beholden to gender. There is no pre-destined DNA-derived delineation between what makes a female coach, or a male coach, or a non-binary coach capable of coaching a team.

What does make a non-male candidate incapable of coaching a team are the attitudes, impressions, and long-dead-but-still-held stereotypical notions of the people in positions of direct influence, not to mention some of the worst people consuming or covering the league. In the NBA, about 120% of those big powerful people are male.

If you want to read it negatively, it’s that those people in positions of power cannot fathom or do not want there to be women leading teams in the NBA. Just as a categorical thing. No women. Women bad. Or something.

If you want to read it more neutrally, well, people self-sort. Just out of reflex, individual persons tend to create environments that suit themselves. Building those environments attracts similar people.

Unfortunately, this kind of familiarity if unchecked tends toward stagnation. Similar people lead to similar thinking. Similar thinking leads to a very narrow field of potential ideas. “If a woman could coach in the NBA, there would have been a woman coach by now,” type stuff.

Buddy, that’s not how it works. Progress is not a promise. People need to actually make decisions and actively do things based on evidential, real-life fact for change to even be offered as an option, let alone embraced or pursued.

I can’t think of a positive reading of what this repeated narrative means. It’s not because I didn’t try. It’s because there isn’t one.

For my own sake, I don’t want to see Dawn leave South Carolina, but were she to trace a different path, she has earned way too damn much to be this kind of counterfeit candidate. She deserves more than a gold star on a report card that James F***ing Dolan gives to her.

Just stop doing this shit, please. If she’s the best candidate, hire her. If she impressed you, don’t try to score PR points out of it. The game happens on the floor, not via press releases or tweets. That’s why you want a f***ing coach in the first place.

Vomit emoji followed by a sigh emoji followed by whatever this thing is: 😑. No one gets the benefit of the doubt until this changes. This story has played out the same way too many times. I hope this is the last. It is impossible to believe that of the 30 best candidates to coach an NBA team, every single one of them is a dude. That’s not how the world works. If you find yourself thinking otherwise, you're wrong.