The Nuggets have officially hired WNBA star Sue Bird to their front office staff, the team announced today in a press release. According to the club, Bird will serve as a Basketball Operation Associate in Denver.
“We are very excited to have Sue join our organization,” president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said in a statement. “Her résumé certainly speaks for itself and as a still active player she will offer an extremely unique perspective.”
Bird has familiarity with several people within the Nuggets’ organization, including head coach Mike Malone, according to Nick Kosmider of The Athletic, who tweets that Bird and Malone got to know one another when Bird was rehabbing an injury in New York and Malone was an assistant coach for the Knicks.
Bird, a longtime WNBA player who has earned 11 All-Star nods in 16 seasons, is the latest in a string of female basketball stars hired by NBA franchises. Kristi Toliver (Wizards), Lindsey Harding (Sixers), Jenny Boucek (Mavericks), and – of course – Becky Hammon (Spurs) are among the current or former WNBA players who are now members of NBA coaching staffs or basketball operations departments.
Is she really the most qualified person for the position? I’ll say it. We’re all thinking it.
Are you kidding me? She’s an associate, so I got the impression that they gave her a job that they’ll tailor around her strengths. Having a pro basketball player is great for the insight they can provide. She also has familiarity with members of the organization, so it’s not just some token hire.
Just because they didn’t hire a man, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad hire. Some people need to stop living in the past.
I hope considering qualifications is not a thing of the past.
But any successful business should have room to hire one woman! Like DXC said, pick one. There’s plenty of female candidates in the basketball business.
Quota hire. Kidding yourself to think otherwise. Every team will “need” one eventually as long as Silver is commissioner. Might as well get your pick of the litter. She’s smart, a PG and team player.
Of course she doesn’t know Professional Basketball like you do! She is taking your job while you twitter away your time….More than obvious you should get the position….LoL
I didn’t read that comment that way. But it is going to inflict on some other male coaches that have been working in the league for a while all the way to the ones trying to break in. Silver’s vision of the NBA is certainly going to be a liberal one.
You can always watch Fox News/Sports to feel better, hang with your peeps.
This is what ticks me off about obnoxious feminist identity hires… every time ANY woman gets somewhere, they have to listen to crap like we see in this thread. The victims of this nonsense aren’t men losing out… it’s the actually exceedingly competent women who have to work their butts off even more to prove they’re for real and not just riding their gender past everyone else. Anyone who’s been around male dominated fields knows that the women that succeed on their merits are the first to bemoan SJW agenda hires.