Hammon took over as acting head coach after Gregg Popovich's ejection, a first for a woman in NBA regular-season history.
On December 30, 2020, during a regular-season game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Lakers, head coach Gregg Popovich was ejected by officials. Assistant coach Becky Hammon stepped in to lead the team for the remainder of the game, becoming the first woman in NBA history to act as head coach during a regular-season game.
The moment was historic and widely covered by national media, symbolizing decades of progress toward gender equity in professional sports coaching. Hammon calmly managed substitutions and in-game strategy against a Lakers team that would go on to win the NBA championship that season, demonstrating poise under the spotlight of an unplanned but landmark occasion.
Commentators and former players hailed the event as a watershed moment, noting that it validated years of speculation about when — not if — a woman would take charge of an NBA bench during a live game. The moment reinforced Hammon's standing as the leading candidate to eventually become a full-time NBA head coach and added further momentum to the broader movement of women entering elite coaching ranks across professional sports. It remains one of the most cited moments in discussions of gender barriers broken in the NBA.