As their mentor at Colorado State in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Tom Collen is at the center of the WNBA Finals coaching battle.
As Aces coach Becky Hammon and Sun coach Curt Miller paced the same sideline during Game 1 of the 2022 WNBA Finals, the man integral to both of their journeys took in the contest from 2,000 miles away. Sitting at his home in Atlanta, Tom Collen watched the Aces claim a 1–0 series lead, doing so without a rooting interest. “It’s really hard for me to pick a side,” he says. No matter who emerges as this year’s champion, Collen will be pleased: “I’m gonna be a winner, one way or the other.”
The reason being is that before the start of the 1998 college basketball season, Collen was hired as Colorado State’s head coach. He inherited a team with Hammon as its star junior point guard. Miller was one of the assistant coaches he brought in.
During Collen’s first year with the program, CSU went 33–3, finished the season ranked No. 7 in the country and lost in the Sweet 16. “I inherited a team that I think was getting ready to explode on the scene and be really good,” he says.
He still thinks of that group as “some of the greatest times of my life,” and recognizes that its success helped establish him in the coaching profession. “No matter how many mistakes I would make, Becky bailed me out of every bad decision,” he says.
Miller, who served as the team’s de facto defensive coordinator, agrees, and said that Hammon’s play during her last two seasons with CSU “single-handedly propelled my career” and provided him with an “opportunity to interview for head jobs down the road.”
Courtesy of Colorado State Athletics
“I’ve been very honest that I probably don’t get a shot to be a head coach without Becky’s leadership on that ’98–99 Colorado State team,” he said before Game 1 of the Finals. (For her efforts, Hammon was inducted into the CSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2004 and the team, more broadly, was inducted in ’19.)
Both the Aces and Sun are looking to win their franchise’s first title, as Las Vegas holds a 2–0 series lead ahead of Thursday’s Game 3. But as the teams slug it out in the best-of-five, the bond between the coaches has been on display. A prime example came just over an hour before tip-off of the series opener, when Hammon stood at the podium to address reporters and threw a playful jab at her coaching foe.
“I can tell Curt was here because I didn’t have to pull [the microphone] way down,” she said. “Me and Curt got the same mike level.” But, she then added, “I love Curt. Curt’s invested into my life. Curt’s invested into my basketball life.”
That buy-in was clear when Miller was an assistant with the Rams. Often throughout his tenure with CSU, he would serve as a practice player—a “dummy defender,” in Hammon’s words. While doing so, Miller, wanting to draw the best out of his players, participated to such a devoted degree that Collen recalls sometimes being “concerned Curt was gonna hurt somebody.”
“He was all of 5'8", but I would put him in there for a 10-minute scrimmage and he would lead both teams in rebounding,” Collen says.
Remembers Miller: “Yes, I was a rebounding little guard. We had a lot of fun. I played hard.”
Now, he merely coaches hard, trying to bring the most out of his veteran group. Hammon is similarly animated—she said after Game 1 she was “lit” at halftime, with her team trailing 38–34. Neither star forward A’ja Wilson nor star guard Chelsea Gray wanted to share the exact language she used.
Collen always felt Hammon would make for a successful coach if she wanted. He notes her instincts and leadership skills were both strengths, and that while she always had strong opinions, “her opinions were pretty accurate,” he says.
Long before she was an assistant under Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, Hammon was a graduate assistant for Collen, returning in her first two WNBA offseasons after her playing days with the Rams concluded. (Former Dream and current Baylor coach Nicki Collen also joined the CSU staff as an assistant, giving CSU three future WNBA Coach of the Years at one time.)
Courtesy of Colorado State Athletics
“You didn’t know what level [Hammon] was gonna coach at, but when that playing career ended you just knew she was gonna be an unbelievable coach, because she had that natural charisma,” Miller says. “People followed her, her knowledge of the game was so high, she was so proactive with her thinking, she could see the second-level so often and see things happen before they really developed.”
In the present, though, Miller’s hoping her foresight is more limited.
“I’m her biggest fan,” he said. “But I’m gonna try and compete like crazy against her.”
Hammon agreed. “We’re trying to whoop each other’s butt,” she said.
So back to the key question: Which of his mentees does Collen think will win this year’s title?
“I’d love to see Curt win a WNBA championship at some point,” he says. “But if you’ve said I’ve got to put my life-savings on somebody, I wouldn’t be putting it on Curt or Becky. I would be putting it down on the talent of Las Vegas.”
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