The NBA is continuing to provide opportunities for minorities and women to be head coaches. The Stockton Kings, the Sacramento Kings G-League affiliate, did both with their latest additions to their front office and coaching staff. The named Lindsey Harding as head coach and Anjali Ranadivé as the general manager on Tuesday.
Harding will become the first Black female to be named head coach of a professional men’s team in the United States and just the second female head coach ever of a professional men’s team. She follows Nancy Lieberman, who was named head coach of the Dallas Mavericks G League affiliate Texas Legends in 2010.
Who is Lindsey Harding?
Harding is loaded with basketball credentials on her résumé. She played college basketball at Duke and won 2007 Naismith College Player of the Year. She averaged 13.6 points per game, 4 rebounds per game, and 3.9 assists per game as a senior.
She was then selected as the top overall pick the 2007 WNBA draft by the Phoenix Mercury before she was traded to the Minnesota Lynx. Harding averaged at least 10 ppg in six of her nine WNBA seasons. She also represented Belarus in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
After retiring in 2016, she was hired by the Philadelphia 76ers as the pro personnel scout ahead of the 2018-19 season and later became a player development coach. She then was hired by the Kings and spent four seasons with the team as an assistant as well as a player development coach. She also is the head coach of the Mexico women’s national team.
Opening Doors
Ranadivé is the daughter of Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé. She served as Stockton’s assistant general manager last season. She is the second female general manager in G League history, after Tori Miller became the general manager of the Atlanta Hawks affiliate College Park Skyhawks in 2020.
Both women make history as the first two women to lead a G League affiliate in NBA history. Becky Hammon seem to be destined to be the first female head coach of an NBA team but she got offered a chance to take over the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. Now Harding is next in line to take possibly become the first. She still has a long way to go, but she will surely get there quicker if she is able to have any success at the G League level.
Harding will take over a Stockton team that went 25-7 last season and finished first in the Western Conference standings before falling to the Sioux Falls Skyforce in the conference semifinals.
