CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Becky Hammon is so focused on her duties as a Spurs assistant that she wasn’t aware of her candidacy for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019 until a reporter asked about it.

“I had no idea,” Hammon said after helping players warm up before Tuesday’s 108-107 win at Memphis.

A news conference announcing the finalists for the last round of balloting will be held Friday during NBA All-Star Weekend. The Class of 2019 will be unveiled at the men’s NCAA basketball Final Four April 5-8 in Minneapolis.

This year’s enshrinement at the Naismith Hall, which honors women and men from high schools to the college ranks to the NBA and WNBA, in Springfield, Mass., is set for Sept. 5-7.

Hammon, who turns 42 on March 11, is one of 12 candidates selected by the women’s committee. It’s a list that also includes Baylor head coach and former Louisiana Tech point guard Kim Mulkey, who is a candidate as both a player and a coach for the third straight year.

Although Hammon will someday be a candidate for induction as a trailblazing NBA coach, this year’s nomination — her second in a row — is solely for her playing career as a three-time All-America choice as a collegian and her 16-season run as one of the greatest point guards in WNBA history.

Other player candidates include Jennifer Azzi, Suzie McConnell, Pearl Moore, Theresa Shank, Valerie Still and Theresa Weatherspoon. In addition to Mulkey, the coaching candidates include Leta Andrews, Marianne Stanley and Barbara Stevens.

“Anytime you are in that kind of sentence, it’s humbling,” Hammon said. “But, at the end of the day, I have no control over it.”

Hammon, who was inducted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame in 2018, said being nominated as a player is a tribute to the pioneers who blazed a path for the female coaches and athletes of her generation.

“There are many women that came before, women who were doing a lot more important things than just playing basketball,” she said. “Women, in whatever field, that brought a certain dynamic and a certain value to the group that you can’t really put a price tag on.

“So, when you are talking about Annie Meyers, and even the ones more in my era like Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, there’s obviously a lot of great legends out there who had to scratch, fight and claw just to get into a pickup game.

“We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go.”

After he stellar career at Colorado State from 1995-99, the 5-foot-6 native of Rapid City, S.D., became a force in the WNBA. A six-time All-Star as a point guard, she ranks 10th on the league’s career scoring chart with 5,841 points.

Hammon played her first eight seasons with the New York Liberty before the San Antonio Stars acquired her in a 2006 trade. While with the Stars, she averaged 14.7 points per game or better in six seasons and 4.2 assists per game or better in seven seasons.

Hammon made four trips to the WNBA Finals, including a 2008 berth with San Antonio. After 15 seasons in San Antonio, the Stars relocated to Las Vegas before the 2018 season after being bought by MGM Resorts International.

“She was part of that group that really ushered in the WNBA,” Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve told ESPN when Hammon retired in 2014. “But I also think she represents the ‘underdog’ WNBA player. She didn’t play at a big-conference school. When you look at her you’re not intimidated by her size or speed. She’s a champion of the savvy, intelligent, crafty basketball style. Becky’s ‘want-to’ and her ‘know-how-to’ are off the charts.”

Hammon’s second act in basketball has been just as spectacular as her first. As a trailblazing assistant coach with the Spurs, she appears poised to someday become the first female head coach in the NBA.

“I hope so,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich told reporters last summer during the Team USA minicamp in Las Vegas. “I hope that other people follow the example and just look at who is qualified, who can do it, who would be respected. Everyone can’t do what Becky is doing. She is very special. But there are other special women out there too who can do it, so hopefully other people will figure that out.”

The Spurs hired Hammon in 2014 as the first female in NBA history to serve as a full-time assistant. Since then, she’s added some significant achievements to her already impressive resume.

In 2015, she coached the team’s Summer League squad to a championship. In May 2018, she made history again when the Milwaukee Bucks reached out to her regarding their vacant head coaching job, a position they eventually filled by hiring former Spurs assistant coach Mike Budenholzer.

The interest from the Bucks came after Hammon turned down a chance to be the head coach of the University of Florida women’s team. Also prior to the opportunity with the Bucks, she was reportedly a candidate to lead the men’s program at Colorado State, her alma mater.

No female has ever been the head coach of an NCAA Division I men’s basketball program.

After assistant coach James Borrego left the Spurs to become head coach of the Charlotte Hornets last summer, Popovich promoted Hammon to the front of the bench.

“She knows her stuff,” Popovich said. “She’s confident. The he-she thing doesn’t fit at all. She’s a coach, and just happens to be a she. That’s it. If it was a he and more qualified, I would have hired a he. But this she was qualified, and that’s who I wanted.”

Mulkey is the only person to win an NCAA national championship as a player, assistant coach and head coach. She also is one of only three people to win a national championship as a player and a head coach, the others being Dean Smith and Bobby Knight.

Mark Aguirre, Chauncey Billups and Chris Webber are among the male player candidates for the Class of 2019. Coaching candidates include Rudy Tomjanovich, George Karl, Rick Adelman, Bill Fitch and the late Cotton Fitzsimmons, who coached the Spurs from 1984-86.

Spurs great Tim Duncan will be eligible for the Naismith Hall for the first time next year and is a lock for the Class of 2020 along with two other first-time eligible players, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett.

But for now, the spotlight shines on Hammon, who received a strong endorsement for a head coaching post in the NBA from Spurs center Pau Gasol in a piece he wrote for The Players’ Tribune last May.

“I’ve played with some of the best players of this generation…and I’ve played under two of the sharpest minds in the history of sports in Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich,” Gasol wrote. “And I’m telling you Becky Hammon can coach. I’m not saying she can coach pretty well. I’m not saying she can coach enough to get by. I’m not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA’s male coaches. I’m saying Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period.”

torsborn@express-news.net

Twitter: @tom_orsborn