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The moment I woke up, it hit me. Like, Wow, This is for real! We’re drafting tonight. This is my job. I’m an NBA coach now. But then things took, well … let’s call it an unexpected turn. And before I knew it, I found myself right in the middle of an unforgettable story. After putting in some work at our practice facility with Coach Beilein, associate head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, and assistant coaches Antonio Lang and Dan Geriot, it was time to head over to our draft war room at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse downtown. We make the drive, walk up to the arena, head toward the entrance, and… We can’t get in. For real. I’m not making this up. None of the doors will open. When we finally get to an entrance that seems promising, there’s a woman sitting at a booth who, I mean … clearly this was her spot. She was in charge. After a stare down, she says, finally: “Do you guys have I.D.?” Now, of course she doesn’t know who I am. Why would she? But she doesn’t recognize any one of us. Time is ticking, and we have an early pick. Coach Beilein offers his name, along with a little smile. Then it really becomes like something straight out of an SNL skit. She’s like, “Who?” And Coach … he’s just so patient and unassuming. “Beilein” he says. “John Beilein.” But it’s still not registering, so after a pause, he adds on quietly, super humbly, almost like it’s an afterthought, “I’m the head coach of the team.” He hands her his I.D., and this woman, God bless her, she’s still not totally convinced. She says she’s gonna have to call over and talk to so and so, adding, “I need to make sure.” “Of course,” Coach says, smiling. “Yes. I completely understand.” Eventually ... we did get in, and drafted Darius Garland, Dylan Windler and Kevin Porter Jr. We all just laughed about it at the time. All’s well that ends well, right? But the more I think about that story, the more I realize that it really epitomizes the type of person Coach Beilein is — kind, humble, thoughtful, patient – exactly the type of leader that I want to be around. In some ways, I feel like that whole thing — as harried and silly as it may have been — was the perfect way to receive affirmation, in real time, that I made the right call to join forces with someone like Coach.

Lindsay Gottlieb

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Why I'm Here

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Cleveland Cavaliers

“No woman had previously gone from college to the NBA; from coaching women to coaching men."

Why I'm Here

BY Lindsay Gottlieb

The how matters, for sure, but I also think it’s important to get into the why, and the overall journey that led me to this place. My parents were both extremely forward-looking – politically progressive and personally supportive. They told me I could be anything that I wanted to be if I worked hard enough. They put all options on the table. As a kid, I played every sport I could — including football on the boy’s team in my town — but I also spent tons of time watching and talking about sports. And even as a young girl I remember gravitating toward the analytical side of the game — the strategy, the X’s and O’s.

Here’s the deal. This thing happened when I was 12 years old that changed my whole life. And I still don’t like to talk about it, because it’s still pretty raw to me, even today. See, basketball wasn’t my first love. I mean, I liked it. My big Christmas present when I was six years old was this triple-pack set with a basketball, soccer ball, and a football. And they were GLOW-IN-THE-DARK. I used to always be out in the street late-night with all my friends and cousins, shooting this glow’d-up basketball into a milkcrate that we’d nailed to a light pole. Good times. But soccer was really my thing. I was actually on the Bahamian youth national team. I was good, and I would let you know about it!

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When I got to college at Brown, my teammates on the basketball team gave me the nickname Coach. I was the person who everyone went to with questions about certain plays, or about what they should be doing on a specific screen. And I absolutely loved that. During my senior year, my coach let me have a dual role where I was on the team as a player but was also a student assistant helping with meetings, recruiting letters, and a bunch of other things. I absolutely loved that, too. That winter, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I wrote a letter to every single Division I women’s basketball coach in the country introducing myself and discussing my passion for coaching. All 351 of them.

That, right there, is why I’m writing this. I only got the chance to become the goalie I was because I had to play with the boys — there wasn’t an option elsewhere. There was a girl’s hockey team in Wisconsin, where I grew up, but it wasn’t the level I wanted to play at. Year after year I proved I could hang with the boys, and they respected me and treated me like their sister (I actually played with my younger brother, Chase, as a U18), so I never felt the need to switch over. Even when I had coaches and parents from other teams telling me it was time to play with my own gender.

PHOTOS BY:

Jed Jacobsohn/The Players' Tribune

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And these weren’t form letters, either. Or emails. Each one was individualized, and super detailed. I referenced specific things about each team, and I sent those things out in the mail. With stamps. The whole deal. I don’t know what I was thinking would come of it, but I was just so passionate about wanting to get into coaching. I figured it couldn’t hurt to take my shot and just be direct. After a few days, something incredible started happening. I’d getback from practice to my little PO Box at Brown, and there’d be all these response letters. I get emotional to this day just thinking about how the coaching community around the country responded to me back then with so much support and encouragement. Tara VanDerveer wrote back to me. Pat Summitt. I mean, can you imagine? There weren’t many jobs to go around, but in all the letters these amazing coaches just kept stressing that I had a bright future. So many of them were like, “The women’s game needs someone like you. Keep working toward your goal!” It was totally inspiring. Then, just before graduation, I landed an interview for an assistant coaching job at Syracuse, and the head coach there at the time told me that my letter was what got me in the door. “I couldn’t not call you after reading that thing.” I got the job, and I literally started coaching the day after I graduated from college. And I’ve been a coach every single day since.

A few years back I met with Commissioner Silver in New York to talk about women in the NBA, and how things might be advancing in the near future. It was clear he was ready to help push the league forward even back then — before any female coaches were in the League. He saw value in what women would bring, if given the opportunities. But I wasn’t quite sure how, if, or when that might affect me. So when I got word back in the spring that Koby Altman, the Cavs GM, wanted to talk with me, I made no assumptions about what he wanted to discuss. He’d recently hired Coach Beilein to lead the team. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But right off the bat, his level of discourse went far beyond most of the general conversations I’d had with people about women coaching in the league, and diversity, and just all the hypothetical stuff about what it might look like for more women to be in positions of power in men’s pro sports. Before I knew it, the conversation shifted from the abstract and became direct. I’m paraphrasing to some extent, but here’s the gist of what he said: “We want to do something different here. We’re going to build this new-look Cavs team with a strong culture as the foundation. We’ll have to differentiate ourselves through player development and being innovative, and by truly creating the team and organization that we want, with the right people, starting with Coach Beilein and his staff.” Then came the part that I wasn’t expecting … the most amazing part. “I’ve studied your background. I know exactly what you’ve done, and we think you can help our staff. We want you to think about joining us.” Wow. In that moment, my life changed. It was a dream come true. But it wasn’t just a dream, it was real life. That meant I had to factor in the realities of life as a working mom. So I talked with Koby and Coach Beilein about things that maybe they hadn’t talked about at the office before. Sure, the hoops chatter flowed easily. But I brought up other stuff, too. I wanted to be clear about what hiring me meant. I told them, “I am going to need to be there for my son in ways that are different from what you’re used to.”

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I wasn’t hunting for a new job when the Cavs got in touch. I loved being at Cal, and the bonds and relationships I created with the student-athletes there are something that I will appreciate and maintain for as long as I live. Those players and coaches and everyone else I worked with at Berkeley … they’ll always be family. That brings us back to the original question: If I wasn’t looking for it, how did it happen? And more importantly, why? Why now, why the NBA, why this job? There are a couple big reasons. But let me start out with this one. Random fact about me: I’m kind of an information geek. Numbers, names, stats … I retain a lot of stuff. I embrace the “nerd” in me. So, yeah, I was aware of the number 5. Acutely aware. Five women in coaching roles in the NBA last season. And yet, I still thought that someday I might coach in the NBA. Not because I’m crazy, or cocky, or unrealistic. But because nobody told me that I couldn’t. Options. In fact, there were a few people in the game that I knew and respected who said I could. It’s important to have people in your life like that: the ones who will tell you what you are capable of. My parents. My college teammates. Even, believe it or not, Adam Silver.

"Five women in coaching roles in the NBA last season. And yet, I still thought that someday I might coach in the NBA."

And they heard me. They listened. Coach Beilein looked me in the eye and told me that we’d figure it out together. He didn’t say, “No problem.” He didn’t say it would be easy – he said we’d figure it out … together. That’s when I knew he gets it. This whole organization does. And all of a sudden, this coaching opportunity wasn’t exciting only because it was a job in the NBA. It was this job, with these people.

Lindsay Gottlieb

Cleveland Cavaliers

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—Lindsay Gottlieb

By Lindsay Gottlieb

SEP 17 2019

The more I seriously considered making this move, the more I kept thinking about issues of history, and representation, and breaking down stereotypes. That was a big part of my why, too. I was so fulfilled doing what I was doing at Cal, and helping those young women harness the power of a Cal degree. So it was going to take a lot to pull me away. It was going to have to be something … bigger. I started to think about how maybe me going to the NBA and becoming another of only a handful of women on the coaching staff of a men’s professional sports team in this country might make a difference. I couldn’t help but think, What if by doing this I become part of the reason why a young woman believes she can be the CEO of a company she’s working for, even though women haven’t traditionally held that position there. Or What if a player looks at me and sees what I’m doing and then believes that she can not simply play in the WNBA, but own a team in the league someday. People need to be able to see something happen in order for them to believe that they can do it too, you know what I mean? And in order to make progress, there must be advancement toward the ultimate goal. Someone has to leave a Power 5 women’s head coaching job to go be an assistant in the NBA before, one day down the line, a women’s Power 5 head coach can go and get a job as a head coach in the NBA. So by doing this, I hope that I can, in my own way, help move things another step forward and broaden the options for others.

—Lindsay Gottlieb

I was cut from the 2014 Olympic roster after being on the national team for the entire previous season. I sat in that room in Lake Placid and listened to three other goalies get their names called, instead of mine. And when that happened my world was turned upside down. I felt my dream was shattered. I knew I could go back to the University of Wisconsin and finish my senior year there, but what came after that … I really didn’t know — and my story isn’t unique. I believed I could make the team again, but when I graduated in 2014, my options were limited. I didn’t see much value, professionally or, honestly, financially, in joining any of the leagues that were running at the time, but I also needed to make a tough decision: Join the working world and give up my lifelong dream, or to try out for the national team and dedicate everything I had to making the team again. So I stayed in Wisconsin, and I did what I knew best: played hockey and trained with the boys. It felt like I had come full circle. That first year out of college I practiced with the Madison Capitals of the USHL — a 22-year-old woman with essentially a bunch of boys — just getting ice time wherever I could. I also got goalie lessons alongside two-time Olympian Jessie Vetter, and I continue to get those lessons. I trained — and continue to train — with some NHL and pro players who workout during the summer in Madison, and who show me nothing but respect and support for the creation of one viable league. They see how hard we train for so few opportunities. Even when I played for Calgary I was flying back and forth from Madison because I wasn’t making enough to uproot my life to a different country. I use the resources and incredible support system I have at my disposal to try to get ready, and stay ready, for national team events, and I am going for my seventh year with the team. It’s sort of crazy, when I spell it out like that. Lots of women do the same thing in regards to training. The best players in the world do this. And this will be our life for this upcoming season without a league. Piecing together games, practices, lifts, treatment, etc. That’s insane. And that’s what we need to work on fixing. I know people can grow tired of hearing empty platitudes about women’s sports and what needs to change. I understand that. But we believe there is a real, simple, attainable goal that we can reach as a collective. There is a great product here, with incredible potential. We just need sponsors to take a chance on us. Lots of sports leagues — heck, lots of businesses — lose money in the initial stages, only to prosper down the road. It’s not easy to make that choice, we know. But we as players, as women, have been doing that our entire lives. We’ve made a tremendous amount of economic and personal sacrifices so we can represent our country on the biggest stage and be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

t was the morning of the NBA draft, and I’d just been hired by the Cavs a week earlier. I’m not gonna lie — it wasn’t just another ordinary day.

I

I have to say: That was really something. I never pictured that. And, just to be clear, by “that” I mean being locked out of an arena in downtown Cleveland with John Beilein on draft night. I don’t at all mean the part about me becoming a coach in the NBA. Because, to be honest, this was always something I’ve dreamed about. Even more important, making it to this level was also something I always felt like I could actually accomplish. A lot of people in the media have been asking me about how I got here — making the leap from head women’s basketball coach at Cal to coaching in the NBA. I get the significance: No woman had previously gone from college to the NBA; from coaching women to coaching men.

Family members have told me that they were puzzled when, at 13, I got all prepped and excited to watch the NBA draft lottery. Yes, you read that right. Not the draft, but the draft lottery. When a cousin of mine pressed me back then about why I’d want to watch a broadcast where you’re finding out not who teams were picking, but simply the order in which they’re picking, she says I had an immediate, matter-of-fact answer. “If I’m going to be a GM one day, I’ll need to know about this stuff.” So, what can I say? I guess I was the kid in the eighth grade talking about being an NBA GM. But the key is that no one laughed when I said that. All options were on the table.

And you know what? I think moving things forward isn’t just about young girls and women. Sure, women need to see other strong women in positions to achieve. And those of us with a platform have an obligation to make sure that our impact reaches as widely and deeply as possible. But can’t that reach include making an impact on young men, too? You always hear that old, outdated nonsense about how women couldn’t possibly coach men because, like, they’re not men themselves, or don’t belong in a locker room, or won’t be respected, or any of the other ridiculous things that close-minded people think…. I almost hate to even dignify that stuff with a response. There’s no legitimate, rational logic behind any of that. I’m more than happy to go and do my thing at the NBA level and help dismantle that antiquated way of thinking. But I think it goes one step further. I truly believe that in this role there is real value I can bring to these young men right now. To suggest that they couldn’t benefit from the perspective of a female coach just seems … off. Maybe I help them with tactics — I have studied the game for 20 years and will work as hard as I can to find ways to make our players and team better. But it may also come in ways that coaches impact players off the court. Maybe I can help them see new options for reaching their full potential. For me, a big part of this opportunity is about using my unique perspective to bring value to these young men, and to this organization, just as much as it is about being a role model for girls. Here’s the thing about being an impactful coach: It actually has nothing to do with gender. First off, you need to know your stuff. Players need to know you can make them better — period. You also need to connect with your players as human beings, not merely as athletes. And you absolutely need to be authentic; I don’t think guys care whether you’re a male or female, but they sure as heck care whether or not they can trust you.

And I’m definitely not going to forget that, ultimately, at the end of the day, the decision to take this job was about me becoming an even better basketball coach. Sometimes we can get comfortable in our careers and then tend not to push ourselves to improve. But I truly believe that the more often you can seek growth, the better off you’re going to be. So that’s a huge motivator for me here as well. I’m a better coach than I was two months ago. And the better I am at my job, the better role model I’ll be. In working with Coach Beilein and the rest of this staff, I’m going to continue to get better every day. How could I not? These are some of the best minds I’ve been around. So you better believe I’m going to keep striving. This Cavs’ locker room may look a little different from the one at my old job — assuming, of course, that I can consistently find my way into the building — but it’s still the same game I know and love. It’s the X’s and O’s, and the sweat, and the drive to help these individuals and this team achieve more than they thought possible. That’s why I’m here.

"I truly believe that in this role there is real value I can bring to these young men right now. To suggest that they couldn’t benefit from the perspective of a female coach just seems … off."

—Lindsay Gottlieb

“This coaching opportunity wasn’t exciting only because it was a job in the NBA. It was this job, with these people.”

Lindsay Gottlieb

The moment I woke up, it hit me. Like, Wow, This is for real! We’re drafting tonight. This is my job. I’m an NBA coach now. But then things took, well … let’s call it an unexpected turn. And before I knew it, I found myself right in the middle of an unforgettable story. After putting in some work at our practice facility with Coach Beilein, associate head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, and assistant coaches Antonio Lang and Dan Geriot, it was time to head over to our draft war room at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse downtown. We make the drive, walk up to the arena, head toward the entrance, and… We can’t get in. For real. I’m not making this up. None of the doors will open. When we finally get to an entrance that seems promising, there’s a woman sitting at a booth who, I mean … clearly this was her spot. She was in charge. After a stare down, she says, finally: “Do you guys have I.D.?” Now, of course she doesn’t know who I am. Why would she? But she doesn’t recognize any one of us. Time is ticking, and we have an early pick. Coach Beilein offers his name, along with a little smile. Then it really becomes like something straight out of an SNL skit. She’s like, “Who?” And Coach … he’s just so patient and unassuming. “Beilein” he says. “John Beilein.” But it’s still not registering, so after a pause, he adds on quietly, super humbly, almost like it’s an afterthought, “I’m the head coach of the team.” He hands her his I.D., and this woman, God bless her, she’s still not totally convinced. She says she’s gonna have to call over and talk to so and so, adding, “I need to make sure.” “Of course,” Coach says, smiling. “Yes. I completely understand.” Eventually … we did get in, and drafted Darius Garland, Dylan Windler and Kevin Porter Jr. We all just laughed about it at the time. All’s well that ends well, right? But the more I think about that story, the more I realize that it really epitomizes the type of person Coach Beilein is — kind, humble, thoughtful, patient – exactly the type of leader that I want to be around. In some ways, I feel like that whole thing — as harried and silly as it may have been — was the perfect way to receive affirmation, in real time, that I made the right call to join forces with someone like Coach.

It was the morning of the NBA draft, and I’d just been hired by the Cavs a week earlier.

A few years back I met with Commissioner Silver in New York to talk about women in the NBA, and how things might be advancing in the near future. It was clear he was ready to help push the league forward even back then — before any female coaches were in the League. He saw value in what women would bring, if given the opportunities. But I wasn’t quite sure how, if, or when that might affect me. So when I got word back in the spring that Koby Altman, the Cavs GM, wanted to talk with me, I made no assumptions about what he wanted to discuss. He’d recently hired Coach Beilein to lead the team. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But right off the bat, his level of discourse went far beyond most of the general conversations I’d had with people about women coaching in the league, and diversity, and just all the hypothetical stuff about what it might look like for more women to be in positions of power in men’s pro sports. Before I knew it, the conversation shifted from the abstract and became direct. I’m paraphrasing to some extent, but here’s the gist of what he said: “We want to do something different here. We’re going to build this new-look Cavs team with a strong culture as the foundation. We’ll have to differentiate ourselves through player development and being innovative, and by truly creating the team and organization that we want, with the right people, starting with Coach Beilein and his staff.” Then came the part that I wasn’t expecting … the most amazing part. “I’ve studied your background. I know exactly what you’ve done, and we think you can help our staff. We want you to think about joining us.” Wow. In that moment, my life changed. It was a dream come true. But it wasn’t just a dream, it was real life. That meant I had to factor in the realities of life as a working mom. So I talked with Koby and Coach Beilein about things that maybe they hadn’t talked about at the office before. Sure, the hoops chatter flowed easily. But I brought up other stuff, too. I wanted to be clear about what hiring me meant. I told them, “I am going to need to be there for my son in ways that are different from what you’re used to.”

And they heard me. They listened. Coach Beilein looked me in the eye and told me that we’d figure it out together. He didn’t say, “No problem.” He didn’t say it would be easy – he said we’d figure it out … together. That’s when I knew he gets it. This whole organization does. And all of a sudden, this coaching opportunity wasn’t exciting only because it was a job in the NBA. It was this job, with these people.

"I truly believe that in this role there is real value I can bring to these young men right now. To suggest that they couldn’t benefit from the perspective of a female coach just seems … off."

—Lindsay Gottlieb

The more I seriously considered making this move, the more I kept thinking about issues of history, and representation, and breaking down stereotypes. That was a big part of my why, too. I was so fulfilled doing what I was doing at Cal, and helping those young women harness the power of a Cal degree. So it was going to take a lot to pull me away. It was going to have to be something ... bigger. I started to think about how maybe me going to the NBA and becoming another of only a handful of women on the coaching staff of a men’s professional sports team in this country might make a difference. I couldn’t help but think, What if by doing this I become part of the reason why a young woman believes she can be the CEO of a company she’s working for, even though women haven’t traditionally held that position there. Or What if a player looks at me and sees what I’m doing and then believes that she can not simply play in the WNBA, but own a team in the league someday. People need to be able to see something happen in order for them to believe that they can do it too, you know what I mean? And in order to make progress, there must be advancement toward the ultimate goal. Someone has to leave a Power 5 women’s head coaching job to go be an assistant in the NBA before, one day down the line, a women’s Power 5 head coach can go and get a job as a head coach in the NBA. So by doing this, I hope that I can, in my own way, help move things another step forward and broaden the options for others.

And you know what? I think moving things forward isn’t just about young girls and women. Sure, women need to see other strong women in positions to achieve. And those of us with a platform have an obligation to make sure that our impact reaches as widely and deeply as possible. But can’t that reach include making an impact on young men, too? You always hear that old, outdated nonsense about how women couldn’t possibly coach men because, like, they’re not men themselves, or don’t belong in a locker room, or won’t be respected, or any of the other ridiculous things that close-minded people think…. I almost hate to even dignify that stuff with a response. There’s no legitimate, rational logic behind any of that. I’m more than happy to go and do my thing at the NBA level and help dismantle that antiquated way of thinking. But I think it goes one step further. I truly believe that in this role there is real value I can bring to these young men right now. To suggest that they couldn’t benefit from the perspective of a female coach just seems … off. Maybe I help them with tactics — I have studied the game for 20 years and will work as hard as I can to find ways to make our players and team better. But it may also come in ways that coaches impact players off the court. Maybe I can help them see new options for reaching their full potential. For me, a big part of this opportunity is about using my unique perspective to bring value to these young men, and to this organization, just as much as it is about being a role model for girls. Here’s the thing about being an impactful coach: It actually has nothing to do with gender. First off, you need to know your stuff. Players need to know you can make them better — period. You also need to connect with your players as human beings, not merely as athletes. And you absolutely need to be authentic; I don’t think guys care whether you’re a male or female, but they sure as heck care whether or not they can trust you.

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Stacy Revere/Getty Images

If you think I’m writing this to argue why Becky is qualified to be an NBA head coach … well, you’re mistaken. That part is obvious.

I’d run through a brick wall for this team. Whatever it takes.

Your dreams are your dreams. Sometimes they don’t make sense to other people.