The shapely peril: Becky Hammon and women in sport

Most of the time, watching and studying the world of sport is a delight. What could be better than to spend one’s time observing and revelling in the physical perfection of the planet’s greatest athletes?

But sometimes, sport has the power to deeply disturb. I’m thinking of times like when they show slow-motion replays of someone breaking his leg, or Cameron Ling.

One of those disturbing occasions is with us this week.

I am speaking, of course, of the San Antonio Spurs’ astonishingly reckless decision to hire Becky Hammon as an assistant coach next season.

Frankly I am shocked that a supposedly professional sporting organisation can act with such disregard for their players, their fans, and the emotional wellbeing of the populace as a whole.

You might be saying, “Hey Ben, chill out! Becky Hammon is an experienced professional basketballer, who is known to possess an excellent feel for the game and a sharp tactical mind, and who has already spent valuable time around the Spurs in an unofficial capacity. As eminently qualified candidates for assistant coaching roles go, you don’t find many more eminently qualified than Becky Hammon.”

You might be saying that, which proves your naiveté. You see, Becky Hammon has a secret that she’d perhaps prefer us not to know. A secret which I fear the Spurs administration may even have been aware of when they hired her, which if true demonstrates their gross irresponsibility.

For Becky Hammon, the so-called ‘basketball expert’, is… A woman.

It’s OK, I’ll pause while you catch your breath.

Yes, she is a woman. She is a female. She is a lady, a girl, une femme, eine fraulein. She has long hair and all those complicated bits that women have that it’s best not to enquire too closely into.

And yet San Antonio are willing to put her in charge of sport. Hammon will be the first woman to work in a full-time coaching position in the NBA.

There’s a reason no woman has done this before. Entrenched sexism? Don’t be stupid.

It’s because women and sport simply don’t go together.

Think about it. Think about the women you know. Do they ever do sport? That’s right, they don’t. Oh, maybe they say they do, but they’re just claiming to be doing sport when actually they’re heading off to the shoe store or the hairdresser’s or the gynaecologist’s.

Women don’t do sport because they are physiologically unsuited to it. Literally millions of studies have conclusively proven that women’s arms and legs lack the unique sporting muscle fibres that make men’s limbs so well-attuned to sport. As evidence of this, I present the undeniable fact that Ian Thorpe is not a woman. Neither, for that matter, is Frank Farina.

I could go on and on – there are so many examples of sportsmen who aren’t women that I hardly even need to say “Mark ‘Sparkles’ McGaw” or “Adrian Tucker”.

Not only this, but women’s brains are designed differently to men. They lack the sporting lobe; the section of the brain which allows a man to instinctively know when one should pass and when one should run; how one should deal with an outswinger in the corridor of uncertainty; when a referee is deliberately refusing to keep ’em back the ten; which member of the opposition is a f***ing dog; and other manly sporting principles.

Given this, how could a reputable club even consider letting a woman gain access to their valuable players and expensive athletic equipment? What if she gives them feminine advice, like telling the point guard to put on fresh lipstick in the key? What if she hangs her bras out to dry on the rim of the hoop; I am given to understand that women, when given a free reign, are constantly hanging bras out to dry, like some kind of pathology.

And consider this: women can, if they want to, have babies. Are the San Antonio Spurs really saying they want a member of their coaching staff having babies during double overtime in the play-offs? Not to mention… You know. That… That thing they do. You know the one. The yucky one. Who’ll clean up that mess?

I fear it is a slippery slope. Soon we may see women infiltrating other once-proud sporting institutions, like the North Melbourne Kangaroos or Little Athletics. Soon we may see the sapping of the strength of sportsmen as female influences make themselves manifest. How long before an AFL game is cancelled so the MCG big screen can show Sex and the City 2? Months? Weeks?

It cannot be coincidence that there are no female sportspeople whose names I can currently recall. It can’t be coincidence that as far as I know there are no sporting competitions in the developed world which allow women’s participation. It can’t be coincidence that a woman has never won the Brownlow medal.

But if the San Antonio Spurs have their way, the entire edifice of world sport will soon disappear down an oestrogen-drenched plughole.

Let this be a warning, sporting world: today it is women assistant coaches; tomorrow it will be women swimmers and hockey players.

Is that a world you want to live in?