The National Basketball Association (NBA) cemented its leadership position as the most progressive major American professional sport regarding gender equality with two recent groundbreaking hires this past summer: Michele Roberts as executive director of the NBA Players Union and Becky Hammon as assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs.

“The recent hires of Hammon and Roberts in the NBA have highlighted a starting point for other American professional sports leagues to begin diminishing stereotypes and empowering gender equity,” writes Joseph M. Hanna, Chair of Goldberg Segalla’s Sports and Entertainment Practice Group. “Particularly with respect to coaching staffs, where communication skills and knowledge of the game are more crucial to a coach than playing experience, a wider net may be cast for hiring women. The NBA is at the forefront of this change in being the first professional sports league to have a woman on the coaching staff or a woman leading the players’ union.”