Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon has caught some attention for using some inspiring techniques to motivate her side before the WNBA Finals – and it feels like something straight from a Disney film.
Channelling her inner Coach Carter or maybe even Gordon Bombay from The Mighty Ducks, Coach Hammon’s latest trick has taken things to another level, getting her team riled up and perhaps one of the reasons behind the Aces taking a three-point win.
After the first game, A’ja Wilson revealed her coach surprised the team with a blast from the past, showing the Aces’ old video clips and photos of the players back during their high school basketball days. With photos showing their teenaged-selves grasping trophies and medals designed to remind them exactly how they got here, and what it would mean to the old versions of themselves.
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Speaking in a press conference, Wilson added: “It’s crazy because today Becky showed us a video from high school and college, and it was telling the story of us and where we are now.
“The things we’ve done in high school, the championships we won, the people that we won it with, and it brings us now to the women that we are and how we still have that heart of a child and we still have that heart of wanting to win with our sisters.”
The moment clearly struck a chord with the Aces locker room. Instead of perhaps the intense tactical slide shows and PowerPoint you might have expected, Hammon managed to inspire them in a different way.
It seems those photos may have been on their minds in the game. The Aces were trailing for much of the first game of the series, with Phoenix dominating for most of the match, even having a nine-point cushion. But after a surge in the final quarter, the Las Vegas team managed to dig deep in turning the game around and taking the first win of the series 89-86.
Aside from the pre-game tactics, Hammon also seems to be able to understand exactly how her time will perform on a given day, using it to even predict the future.
Ahead of this seven-game series, Hammon said, “I think we have the best overall bench that we’ve had since I’ve been here.”
And that bench undoubtedly made the difference in the result of game one. After the game, she even joked: “I have a crystal ball at home… I predict our defense will be better.”
Only time will tell if the defense will actually be better as the two teams gear up for game 2 on Sunday.