When Teresa Resch joined the Toronto Raptors organization, she was among only a very few women working in a leadership position on the technical side.
That was in 2013.
In 2023, the Raptors could be positioning themselves to be the first NBA team to hire a female head coach.
Toronto has received permission to speak with Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon.
Hammon led Las Vegas to the 2022 WNBA championship and was voted the league's coach of the year. Prior to coaching the Aces, she spent eight seasons as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs as the league’s first full-time female coach. Hammon was also the first female to coach an NBA Summer League team, leading San Antonio to the Summer League title in 2015.
Resch, a Jackson County Central graduate, is Vice President of Basketball Operations and Player Development for the Raptors.
She played a key role in Toronto hiring Nick Nurse as coach in 2018, with the Raptors then beating Golden State for the NBA title in 2019.
Nurse, who is a Carroll, Iowa native and played college basketball at Northern Iowa, was named coach of the year in 2020 but was let go by Toronto less than two years later.
The Raptors were 41-41 this season before losing to the Chicago Bulls in the 9-10 game of the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.
Other reported candidates for the Raptor’s head coaching position:
Earl Watson: An assistant to Nurse for two seasons in Toronto and former Phoenix head coach
Jerry Stackhouse: Led Raptors 905 to a G-League title and also served under former Toronto coach Dwayne Casey.
Kenny Atkinson: Former Brooklyn Nets coach and current Golden State assistant.
Charles Lee: Milwaukee assistant.
Frank Vogel: Won the 2020 NBA title with the Lakers
Sam Cassell: A former NBA star who played with the Timberwolves and seven other teams. Has experience as an NBA assistant with Washington, the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia.
Raptors President Masai Ujiri compared the current coaching search with the one that ended with Nurse being hired in 2018 to the Toronto Sun.
“I think the coaching search is different,” Ujiri said. “I think Teresa, Bobby (General Manager Bobby Webster), and Dan (Assistant GM Dan Tolzman), they did an incredible job in just detailing the process of what we go through in finding the next person to do this job and we’re actually even learning more what the nuances of these kinds of processes are going to be. I’m excited about that because we get to meet people with different minds, different kinds of thinking, with the mindset of winning.”
The timeline for a hiring is uncertain, but the preference would be to have the next coach in place by the draft in June, Ujiri said.
Resch herself has been the topic of speculation for several years that she would become the first female General Manager in NBA history. That may still happen, but last year Resch was in the running to become the first female GM of an NHL team.
Resch interviewed with the Chicago Blackhawks about their vacant position last spring. The team eventually stuck with Kyle Davidson, who had the position on an interim basis.