Becky Hammon’s top 5 WNBA career moments as a player

It’s no secret that Becky Hammon is a trailblazer.

Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023, the Aces coach is most known for the accomplishments that came after her WNBA career.

From becoming the first full-time female assistant coach in NBA history when she joined San Antonio Spurs to earning Coach of the Year honors in her first season with the Aces, Hammon prioritized winning.

When she became the first female head coach in the NBA Summer League in 2015, she took home the crown. When she took the helm of the Aces in 2022, she became the first rookie coach to win a WNBA championship, then earned a repeat title last season.

But Hammon made an impact on the court in the WNBA as well, playing 16 seasons, split evenly between the New York Liberty and San Antonio Silver Stars, before she retired in 2014.

In honor of her decorated career, the league deemed her one of the WNBA’s top 15 players of all time in 2011 and one of the top 25 players of all time in 2021.

Here are the top five moments in Hammon’s WNBA playing career:

5. First All-Star appearance

Making an All-Star team might seem like a minor milestone, but for Hammon, it was in complete defiance of all odds. The 5-foot-6-inch guard went undrafted after a historic senior year at Colorado State, but fought through training camp to make the Liberty’s roster in 1999.

Hammon was barely even scouted out of high school and has often called her underdog story what made her “relatable” to fans at the time.

By 2003, Hammon’s importance to the Liberty was undeniable. She had a breakout season, averaging 14.7 points per game, leading to her first All-Star nod.

The 2003 WNBA All-Star Game was played in front of her home crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York on July 12, but she couldn’t play.

She tore her ACL in a loss to the Detroit Shock on June 27, three days after pushing the Liberty to win over the Charlotte Sting with 21 points.

Luckily, she’d go on to make five more All-Star appearances in her career.

4. 5,000 points

Hammon became just the seventh player to score 5,000 points in her career on Aug. 31, 2011, when she scored 16 in San Antonio’s 78-66 win over the Connecticut Sun. She was tied for the game high that day with Tina Charles, who is still playing in the WNBA for the Atlanta Dream.

Hammon retired having scored 5,841 points. Since the Silver Stars turned into the Aces, she is still third on the organization’s all-time scoring list with 3,474 points.

3. Assists leader

Hammon gained a reputation as “Big Shot Becky” for her clutch buckets, but she finished the 2007 season with a career-high 5.0 assists per game, which was best in the league.

When she dished the ball at league-high clip, it was her first year in San Antonio after being traded from the Liberty. She came out of that season second in MVP voting, having boosted the team to 20 wins and a second-place Western Conference finish after it had just 13 wins the year before.

2. 3-point contest champion

Hammon has seemingly done it all, even winning the All-Star 3-point contest in 2009.

Dominating the first and final rounds at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, Hammon bested the likes of Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi to claim the title.

Hammon was most effective from her second rack in the final round, cashing on four of five attempts from the middle of the floor and finishing with 16 points.

Finalists Bird and Katie Smith only had 12 points in the last round.

1. Postseason heroics

Hammon played for the Liberty for eight seasons, and they made the playoffs every year outside of 2003 (when she was injured) and her final year with the team in 2006.

Although Hammon advanced to the WNBA Finals in 1999, 2000 and 2002 with New York and in 2008 with San Antonio, her top career moment might have been in a year she missed the last stage of the postseason.

The Liberty upset the defending WNBA champions Detroit Shock to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals in September 2004, and they couldn’t have done it without Hammon.

She scored 20 points, then a playoff career-high, then assisted Bethany Donaphin’s turnaround jumper with half a second remaining in the game.

The basket gave the Liberty a 66-64 victory, and Hammon showed she could make the important pass long before she was ever called “Big Shot Becky.”

Contact Callie Lawson-Freeman at clawsonfreeman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @CallieJLaw on X.