SAN FRANCISCO — New Sacramento Kings assistant Nancy Lieberman recalls a conversation with Pat Riley a few years back when she explained to the Miami Heat executive how much she wanted to keep coaching at basketball’s highest level.

“When I said to him, ‘You know, I really would like to coach,’ and he said, ‘You would?’ and he goes, ‘Nancy, if you want something you have to tell people what you want,'” she said. “I didn’t want to be that pushy broad. I just normally assumed: ‘Well, I’m Nancy, I’ve been around the game my whole life, they should know this. They should have a crystal ball and know what I want. That was absolutely horrible thinking on my side. The most important thing is that I started to share what my aspirations were – ‘I’d like to do this.'”

The Hall of Famer was hired by the Kings on Friday, joining Becky Hammon of the San Antonio Spurs as another female NBA assistant coach.

Lieberman was scheduled to be in Las Vegas later in the weekend for an NBA coaching camp with Kings Coach George Karl and Vlade Divac, Sacramento’s vice president of basketball and franchise operations.

Lieberman has worked as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks’ D-League team and most recently as an assistant general manager of the franchise. She also was coach/general manager of the WNBA’s Detroit Shock.

She is a two-time Olympian, a three-time All-American and a two-time national champion in college for Old Dominion.

Lieberman was one of the original players in the WNBA, coming out of retirement in 1997 at age 39 and getting drafted by the Phoenix Mercury for the league’s inaugural season. Nicknamed “Lady Magic,” Lieberman was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame three years later.

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