Mike Francesa Thinks a Woman Could Never Be the Best Candidate for NBA Head Coach

Wow. Francesa says if a woman got a NBA HC job, it would be a publicity stunt. Because they OBVIOUSLY wouldn't be the most qualified person! pic.twitter.com/LMFhclqi5L
— Funhouse (@SportsFunhouse) March 6, 2017

Some people still live in a fantasy world where everything is based on merit. Some people seem to truly believe that high-profile jobs—like drive-time talk radio shows, presidencies, and NBA head-coaching positions, for instance—are always awarded to those who are most qualified. It's a particularly facile bit of circular logic: A guy has an NBA head coaching position because he's a good coach. How do you know? He's an NBA head coach, that's how.

I mention this because Mike Francesa, the Donald Trump of sports radio hosts, went out and said some stupid shit about women coaching in the NBA last week, without any facts whatsoever to back it up, and then doubled down on it on Monday.

Last week, Francesa took a call from a real nice-sounding guy with a daughter who was wondering if we'd ever see a woman coaching an NBA team. Francesa doesn't have to wonder; he knows: "Impossible." His reasoning, if you want to call it that, is that women have no experience coaching in the NBA—I can think of a quick fix to this one—and some pseudo-science/pop-psychology/straight-up sexism about NBA players not being able to be coached by a woman.

"Here's your thing — you have decided that your daughter should be allowed to manage a professional team. Let's be honest, your daughter, maybe she'll become a great athlete. Maybe she'll become a great executive. But the problem is there's not gonna be an avenue for her to manage a major- league men's team," Francesa said. "First of all, do you know how difficult it would be for a female to manage 25 men? Or 50 men? Do you know how impossible that would be?"

Do you know how impossible it is to have degrees of impossibility, guy who talks for a living? Anyway, this is a horrible take that relies solely on a belief that men can never be subordinate to women, and because of that, and that alone, a female head coach would be doomed to failure. Francesa did not stop there, however. He dug in and said the only way a woman would get a head-coaching position would be as a publicity stunt "because that person would not be the best candidate for the job. There are far more qualified people from a pool that would be 99.9 percent male."

Here, just for fun, is a random selection of former coaches of the New York Knicks, who play in Francesa's backyard. They are both part card-carrying members of the 99.9 percent.

• Derek Fisher
• Isiah Thomas

Fisher had exactly zero head-coaching experience, at any level, before he was given the reins of one of the NBA's premier franchises. He was fired after a season and a half with a .294 winning percentage. Isiah Thomas, perhaps more than any one person not named James Dolan, is responsible for the pathetic state of the Knicks for a full decade. He lasted a bit longer than Fisher and amassed a .341 winning percentage.

These men, definitionally, were not the best candidates for the New York Knicks job, and yet there they are, on the Knicks Head Coaches Wikipedia page and everything. They did not manage 25 men, or 50 men, well, or at all even. If it seems unfair to you that I cherry-picked two of the worst coaches, consider that Mike Francesa cherry-picked his own ass. At least I brought some quantifiable information to the party; Francesa can hit the bricks with his 99.9 candidate pool. And the reason he hedged that tenth of a percent? Becky Hammon.

Hammon has been an assistant coach with Gregg Popovich and the Spurs since 2014. In 2015, she coached San Antonio's Summer League team to the title. The only reason she would not be considered the best candidate if hired as a head coach is because too many people still think like Francesa instead of like Popovich.

Between Francesa and Pop, though, who would you trust with an NBA team?