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Aces’ Becky Hammon, Mercury’s Nate Tibbetts on South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore of coaching

LAS VEGAS — Before every game, Phoenix Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts remembers his late father, Fred. During starting lineup announcements, Tibbetts thinks about telling his dad how he hopes Phoenix’s 3-pointers will fall, about the importance of defending at a high level and the hope for his dad to look out for them in the ensuing 40 minutes.

Fred died of colon cancer in 2008. But Tibbetts said he still feels his dad’s strength.

Tibbetts knows he wouldn’t be where he is — coaching in the WNBA Finals — without his father. His tie to women’s basketball stems back to his childhood. Fred Tibbetts was one of the all-time great coaches in their native South Dakota, coaching high school girls basketball for nearly 30 years, first at Jefferson High School in Sioux Falls and then at Sioux Falls Roosevelt High School before retiring in 2005. He won more than 500 games, staged an 111-game winning streak and recorded seven undefeated championship seasons.

“He got his teams, his girls, to fall in love with the gym,” said Tibbetts, who is in his second year with Phoenix.

Call it serendipity or just a full-circle coincidence, but as Tibbetts and the Mercury prepare for Game 2 of the 2025 finals on Sunday, they are looking to top one of Fred’s former high school opponents.

Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon grew up across the state, in Rapid City, S.D., more than 300 miles west of the Tibbetts in Sioux Falls. In 1994, Hammon’s Stevens High School team beat Roosevelt behind Hammon’s 33 points.

“I said there’s absolutely no way she can score 33 again,” Fred Tibbetts said then, according to a story in the Argus Leader.

He was proven correct. The next time they played, Hammon scored 41 points in a dominant performance that led him to call her one of the best guards he’d ever seen.

“She’s as entertaining as there’s ever been,” he added in the article. “It was like watching Magic Johnson.”

Hammon’s legacy grew as she progressed through high school, earning a scholarship to Colorado State before her WNBA career, where, despite going undrafted, she became a six-time All-Star and is considered one of the sport’s greats. Though Tibbetts, a former NBA assistant coach, didn’t know Hammon personally until she joined the San Antonio Spurs coaching staff in 2014, he had long known of her legend.

His parents loved telling the story of Fred coaching against the 5-foot-6 guard.

“To me, South Dakota is a special place in that people support each other,” Hammon said.

In 2008, Tibbetts was a first-year coach for the NBA G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce. His debut season coincided with the death of his father. The sport served as a reprieve, and it provided a community that gave him strength.

“I needed basketball to help get me through that time,” Tibbetts said.

Tibbetts is confident his dad would have loved his Phoenix team.

“This is right up his style. Tenacious. Tough. Gritty. Nothing easy. And then free-flowing offensively and a team that cares about one another,” Tibbetts said.

Tibbetts and Hammon said their relationship has strengthened in recent years. During the NBA’s 2020 bubble, Hammon’s Spurs stayed in the same hotel as Tibbetts’ Trail Blazers. They played pickleball against each other regularly.

A little friendly competition has now made its way to a bigger venue.

“She’s just been absolutely awesome for me to just bounce things off,” Tibbetts said. “We’re all chasing what she’s done there.”

Tibbetts is the WNBA Finals newcomer. But with around 30 seconds left in Game 4 of Phoenix’s semifinal-clinching win over the Minnesota Lynx, Tibbetts searched the crowd for his family. He spotted them, and thought not only of those in attendance but of his dad, too. Tibbetts, like his dad, leads with joy, according to Mercury assistant Michael Joiner, who got to know Fred as a player on the Skyforce in the mid-2000s.

“I would not be here without him,” Tibbetts said. “I think my dad would have been proud of me if I was the high school coach in Platte, South Dakota.”

But he’s on a grander stage instead.

“He would be super proud of this, to have Becky and I sitting up here leading these two great organizations,” Tibbetts said. “It’s pretty special.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Las Vegas Aces, Phoenix Mercury, WNBA

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