3 female head coaches who could replace J.B. Bickerstaff with Cleveland Cavaliers

No. 3 - Natalie Nakase, Las Vegas Aces

If there is one female coach who has a mix of every type of experience the Cavaliers could hope to see, it is Natalie Nakase of the Las Vegas Aces. Since 2022, she has worked under the famous Becky Hammon as an assistant coach, but before that she played professionally for four seasons. She joined the coaching world, eventually working under former Cavs coach Ty Lue with the Los Angeles Clippers as an assistant coach.

Nakase only stayed in the NBA for two seasons, but her coaching career also expanded beyond the US borders, working with numerous international organizations. She could bring a vast array of knowledge, experience and gameplans to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Under any new coaching regime, it would do the Cavs good to experiment and find a new playstyle to move away from their stagnant iso-heavy ball they often revert back to playing.

While the world has not seen a Nakase-made offensive scheme yet, she is a worthy candidate to become the first NBA head coach with nearly two decades of experience in professional basketball. She served as a temporary head coach for the Aces when Hammon served a two-game suspension, and she won. It is an undeniably small sample size, but the Cavaliers should take her into serious consideration to build her resume and test her potential as an NBA head coach.

It seems like only a matter of time before the Cleveland Cavaliers are interviewing for a new head coach, and it is only a matter of time before the winning candidate for one of the 30 head coaching spots is a woman. While the Cavaliers will meet with countless candidates, these three female professional coaches only scratch the surface to the possible options in women's basketball with the college coaching scene unexplored in this article.