The New York Liberty formally introduced the team's new head coach Chris DeMarco to fans and the wider Liberty family by way of a press conference held Wednesday, December 10. While DeMarco brings a long list of impressive credentials to the job, one admission he made while speaking to reporters is raising eyebrows.
DeMarco, who will continue his work with the Warriors until he officially begins to helm the Liberty on January 1, said that he's been doing a lot of research on the franchise he'll be running. "In my free time I have, pouring into this, probably ordered every book on the New York Liberty," he explained.
"I always watched as a fan. So now I have to shift my focus and watch as a coach. So there’s a lot to go back and watch. ... To learn about the history of the WNBA," he continued.
While it's certainly admirable, and one would assume absolutely necessary, for the new head coach to dig into the history of the team and league he will be working in, it's remarkable that DeMarco felt comfortable admitting to the room that he is unfamiliar with the history of the Liberty and the WNBA as a whole.
To be honest, it's difficult to imagine that a woman in the opposite position — having been hired to coach an NBA team — could tell a room full of reporters that she is unfamiliar with the history of the league and not be sharply condemned for making that reveal. In fact, it wouldn't be especially surprising if she subsequently lost the coaching position once the internet got a hold of the comment.
This is not meant to suggest that DeMarco didn't earn the position, nor is it meant to suggest he won't be excellent as the team's new coach. But his comment is part of a troubling trend in the WNBA: it seems that there's more interest in coaching now that the league is making more money and viewership is breaking records; it also seems that plenty of people are willing to jump ship from the NBA without doing their homework first.
It's no small secret that women in the NBA are held to a different standard than their male counterparts, something Aces' head coach Becky Hammon touched on in an interview with Candace Parker and Aliyah Boston for the pair's "Post Moves" podcast on November 12.
Hammon, who was an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs from August 2014 until she took over as head coach of the Las Vegas Aces in 2022, broke down, dissected, and trashed many of the sexist beliefs and stereotypes surrounding the idea of women coaching in the NBA.
Hammon addressed one complaint that is often used to justify not hiring more women as coaches in the NBA: that they don't have experience playing in the league. "It's like, well, how many coaches are actually have played in the NBA that are that are coaching now?" she said. "Not that many. There are some, obviously, and some very successful ones."