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Indianapolis – During the practice of the Indiana Pacers team before a crucial 6 match of the NBA final, deputy coach Jenny Boucek did everything but focusing on the story she made.
She has strategic Head coach Rick Carlisle In Center Court, performed three -point shooting exercises With TJ McConnell, And jumped to take a High Five from the 6’9 ”striker Obi Toppin, just as any assistant coach would do so.
Look at the full interview on “Hallie Jackson Now” at 5 pm HE on NBC News NOW
But his presence on the ground at one of the highest levels of team leadership has never occurred before in the NBA. According to the League, Boucek is the first woman to be an assistant staff coach in an NBA finals.
“I don’t think about it on a daily basis,” Boucek told NBA News after Wednesday’s team training. “I just want to train the team, go to war with them, try to help us win a championship.”
Although the Pacers are behind 3-2 in the series of seven best, it is the closest that they have been in a championship since the Lakers of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in 2000.
And this year’s race is the one that few have predicted.
“We are very aware that this season has been somewhat magical for us,” said Boucek. “There has been a grace in what we do and joy and cohesion.”
While Boucek qualifies as a “public service player”, Carlisle accused her of focusing on improving the defense of the team and relied on his viral now Football style game design During key moments of the season.
“This year, it focused a lot about gathering the defense and working with players and staff on creating a system that maximizes our skills,” said Boucek.
Boucek became the third assistant coach of the NBA in 2017 when the Sacramento Kings hired her to work on the development of players, coming in the league with years of experience in training in the WNBA, where she also played for Cleveland Rockers during the 1997 inaugural season.
“It was very impactful and made a big impression on my young spirit to look up in the stands and see young girls like, almost perplexed, to see women do something that they had never seen women do”, she played during this season.
“But what really made me showed adult women in the stalls in tears,” she said, explaining that it was more than sport. “This league represents all the no that these women have heard all their lives and all their hypotheses because of their gender, and that represents a massive yes.”
Since this first season, the WNBA and the professional sports leagues of women have seen An increase in enthusiasm and investment. According to the kind notes and the messages she receives, to the fathers who prevented her from telling her what impact she has on their daughters, Boucek says that she takes responsibility seriously.
“I don’t like the spotlight on me,” she warned, “but I understand the” goal of the image “and I feel the responsibility to represent women in a certain way, to represent mothers, in a way.”
It is the title of “mom” that she says priority.
Boucek has always wanted to be a mother and was frank on her desire to repel basketball to become one. But the teams worked with her to make sure she didn’t have to make a choice.
Despite his pregnancy at the end which would prevent him from traveling from months until the 2018 season, at least three NBA teams worked to recruit it. Boucek had her daughter, Rylie, a few days after signing with the Mavericks in Dallas, who built a coach position not carrying for his first months.
When she followed Carlisle to the Pacers of Indiana, the team agreed to travel with her daughter and a caregiver during trips en route for more than three days. It is a type of accommodation that she wants to see becoming normal.
“I hope that one of the by-products of this is that the NBA and the Pacers give the example for all companies,” said Boucek.
As for the future, while Carlisle said on several occasions that he sees her becoming the first woman’s first trainer of the NBA one day, Boucek says that it is not a goal, but admits that she never wanted to be chief coach and held the post in the WNBA twice.
“If my next assignment, and I think it’s a useful mission, is to be the head coach of the NBA, I will be very honored to do this honor and to represent women and to show that different types of leaders can succeed.”
