As the Celtics continue their search for a new coach, a nutrition company decided to put up a billboard along the Mass. Pike suggesting that the team hire Kara Lawson or Becky Hammon.
The billboard calls attention to Brad Stevens, who stepped away as coach to become president of basketball operations after the Celtics bowed out of the first round of the NBA playoffs June 1.
This billboard has been placed near the #Celtics practice facility. Is it time? pic.twitter.com/qtE2z4lyHX
— gary washburn (@GwashburnGlobe) June 14, 2021
Both Hammon and Lawson are strong candidates. Hammon has spent the last six seasons as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, and served as head coach for the team in the Las Vegas Summer League in 2015, 2016, and 2019. She played 16 years in the WNBA before retiring in 2014.
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Lawson played 13 seasons in the WNBA before serving as the primary television analyst for the Washington Wizards while also calling games on ESPN radio. She was hired by the Celtics as an assistant coach for the 2019-20 season, becoming the first woman to ever coach for them.
She agreed to become head women’s basketball coach at Duke University last July.
“We wanted to highlight two outstanding candidates and a moment in history in which both are supremely qualified based on the context of their basketball résumé,” said Jarrod Jordan, the chief marketing officer for Iovate Health Sciences Inc., the parent company of Six Star Pro Nutrition, which purchased the billboard.
“Boston’s basketball franchise made history in 1966 by making Bill Russell the first African-American head coach in a major North American men’s sports league. Six Star would love to see yet another groundbreaking hire in 2021.”
A league source told the Globe Monday that the search for Stevens’s replacement could take weeks. A list of candidates has not been finalized, and some prospective coaches are still in the playoffs. Follow along with the search here.
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Follow Andrew Mahoney @GlobeMahoney.