Jew of the Week: Nancy Lieberman

Greatest Woman in Basketball

Nancy Elizabeth Lieberman (b. 1958) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She was passionate about sports from a very young age, and by the time she was in high school, was recognized as one of the best female basketball players in the country. At 17, she was selected for the US National Team, and helped it win the gold medal at the Pan American Games, its first since 1963. The following year, she won silver with the team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the youngest basketball player in Olympics history. Lieberman then led her college team to two championships, and was the first player to twice win the Wade Trophy (for women’s basketball player of the year). To this day, she holds a number of unbeaten records. After college, Lieberman was drafted first overall by the Dallas Diamonds of the Women’s Pro Basketball League (WBL). She soon became known as “Lady Magic”, the female counterpart to “Magic” Johnson. In 1997, the WNBA was formed and Lieberman played for the Phoenix Mercury, being its oldest player at 39. She then coached and managed the Detroit Shock for three years, before moving on to ESPN to be a basketball analyst. She came back to the Shock in 2008, at the age of 50, to play on a one-week contract, setting a record as the oldest professional basketball player ever. The following year, she became the coach of the Texas Legends (the farm team of the Dallas Mavericks), making her the first female to coach a men’s pro basketball team. In 2015, she became an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings, only the second female coach of an NBA team in history. Her most recent achievement was coaching the Power team of the BIG3 league to the 2018 championship. She has also been a contestant on American Gladiators. Her son plays for Hapoel Holon in the Israeli basketball league. Lieberman was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996, and into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.

Words of the Week

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet