Becky Hammon is closer to becoming an NBA head coach than ever before — but she had to leave the league to make it happen

• Becky Hammon has long been seen as the leading candidate to become the NBA's first woman head coach.
• After several interviews, she left the NBA to lead the Las Vegas Aces to their first WNBA title.

Becky Hammon may, at long last, be on the brink of breaking the highest glass ceiling in sports: becoming the first woman head coach of a men's major professional sports team.

The longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant — who has long been seen as the leading candidate to become the first woman head coach in NBA history — is set to interview for the now-vacant head coaching job with the Toronto Raptors. And while it's far from her first time auditioning for a spot at the front of an NBA franchise's bench, Hammon is better equipped now than ever before to land the role.

An unforeseen return to the WNBA may have made all the difference.

After the many NBA head coaching interviews she endured, Hammon recalled receiving similar feedback each time she was passed over for the gig:

"Two things that people always said: 'You've only been in San Antonio, and you've never been a head coach,'" Hammon said during a press conference in January.

So after eight years as a Spurs assistant coach under league legend Gregg Popovich, the six-time WNBA All-Star left men's basketball to become the head coach of the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces. Though Hammon conceded that she previously "had no intentions of leaving the NBA" at that time, the Aces gave her an offer that was too good to refuse: a chance to control her own team.

In taking the role, Hammon filled two of the gaps NBA executives pointed to on her resume: taking a job outside of San Antonio and garnering experience as a head coach. And just nine months after assuming a long-coveted position at the head of a bench in the league where her professional basketball career began, Hammon guided Las Vegas — long a title contender but never a victor — to their first-ever WNBA championship.

There are innumerable complimentary adjectives suitable for describing Hammon's near-instant success upon assuming the helm of a professional basketball team. "Surprising," however, is not one of them.

Just ask those who know best:

"She's a great coach," Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy, who worked alongside Hammon on Popovich's Spurs staff, previously told Insider. "It's not been shocking to any of us."

Now, as she prepares to interview alongside a litany of current NBA assistants — "Golden State's Kenny Atkinson, Milwaukee's Charles Lee, Phoenix's Kevin Young, San Antonio's Mitch Johnson, Sacramento's Jordi Fernandez, Memphis' Darko Rajakovic, and Miami's Chris Quinn" among others, according to ESPN — Hammon can point to her experience as a head coach outside of San Antonio as a differentiator.

She's left NBA executives with no more excuses. Even still, given the sheer amount of public rejections she's faced in the men's game, Hammon would be justified in feeling wary of putting herself back in the NBA coaching circuit.

But that's just not how the 46-year-old — who says she's "used to people not picking me" — approaches a challenge.

"She doesn't fear anything," Aces superstar and WNBA Finals MVP Chelsea Gray previously told Insider.

"She always says, 'People jump out the water when they see sharks — I jump in.'"