Silver: I'd be disappointed if NBA doesn't hire female HC within 5 years

NBA commissioner Adam Silver hopes to see a woman fill one of the league's head coaching positions in the near future.

Appearing on NCAA's "College Sports Conversations - Title IX at 50" podcast with Bonnie Bernstein and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert this week, Silver admitted the NBA still has some work to do when it comes to women joining its coaching ranks.

"Progress isn't happening as fast as I'd like to see," he said.

Silver noted that the NBA has made a "concerted effort" to hire more female officials and hopes to see that continue at the coaching level, saying he'd be disappointed if the league hasn't welcomed its first female head coach in the next five years.

"If I were out looking to hire a coach right now, I'd say there's a market irregularity, there's clearly a bias in the system against women," Silver said. "Now part of it is there's no shortcuts to developing a new pool of candidates, and that's what we're going through now. That's I think why you're seeing, you know, seven female assistants because still you want people to be developed, to come up the ranks, to sort of learn the profession, learn it in the assistant ranks and then work their way up.

"But so, I don't want to put a precise number on it. I'd say, I would be hugely disappointed if, certainly, in five years, we haven't seen our first female head coach in the NBA."

There have been 15 women to serve as assistant coaches in the NBA to date, beginning with Lisa Boyer in 2001.

Former San Antonio Spurs assistant Becky Hammon made history in 2015 as the first-ever female head coach in the Summer League and became the first woman to act as a head coach in an NBA game in 2020. She interviewed for the Portland Trail Blazers' head coach opening in 2021, but they passed on her in favor of Chauncey Billups.