Teresa Weatherspoon and Becky Hammon embrace their intertwined legacies in the history -- and future -- of the WNBA

Time doesn’t change much for Teresa Weatherspoon and Becky Hammon.

It has been 21 years since they wore the same jersey for the New York Liberty. In those years, Weatherspoon and Hammon formed part of a tight-knit fraternity of former WNBA players who have returned to the league as coaches. They also represent a new wave of women rising from assistant coaching positions in the NBA to head coaching roles in the WNBA, a crucial pipeline for talent development between the leagues.

But when they stepped into Wintrust Arena for Thursday’s game between Hammon’s Las Vegas Aces and Weatherspoon’s Chicago Sky, none of those milestones mattered. They were just two ex-teammates catching up after a long break.

“That’s my little sister,” Weatherspoon said as the pair sat down to hold a pregame news conference together.

“I like to see her before I have to go out there and see her pumping her fist in my face again,” Hammon joked.

The joint news conference was a nod to their routine during the three years when Hammon worked as an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs and Weatherspoon for the New Orleans Pelicans. When the teams played one another, Weatherspoon would slip into the Spurs locker room before tipoff to trade stories with Hammon.

In a friendship spanning nearly three decades, this is how they’ve always been: catching time between games, slipping back into conversation with an immediacy built on mutual respect.

“She was my first vet,” Hammon said. “So now to be sitting across from her — I know we’ve always been cheering from afar. I don’t talk to her every day, but we pick up right where we left off. I don’t need to call her and be like, ‘Spoon, are we still cool? You still got me?’ I already know.”

Hammon remembers her first impression of Weatherspoon during her rookie year with the Liberty in 1999: “Man, I hope I’m that comfortable in my skin when I get older.”

Weatherspoon had been on the Liberty roster since the league’s inception two years earlier, and she was a nine-year veteran of the toughest leagues in Europe. When Hammon showed up, it was Weatherspoon’s job to put the rookie through her paces.

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