Sports

Woman Coaches Men's Basketball Team

Nancy Lieberman was a star at Old Dominion.

Nancy Lieberman won't say for sure she's the first female coach of professional male basketball players, but she almost certainly is: "There might have been one somewhere in this country or another who put five guys on the floor and called it a pro game," she said. "But this is a first for a league with guys who have been first-round draft picks, multimillionaires. This is the NBA." Well, almost: it's the NBA Development League, where she recently began coaching the new Texas Legends, an affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks. A basketball superstar at Old Dominion in the 1970s and a former WNBA coach, Lieberman found basketball as a way to cope with a difficult childhood on Long Island. Her players say she brings an unusual motivational abilities learned on her long journey to gaining in and around the men's game.