Pau Gasol Says Becky Hammon 'Can Coach NBA Basketball' in Players' Tribune

San Antonio Spurs center Pau Gasol penned an open letter for The Players' Tribune on Friday advocating for Becky Hammon to be hired as an NBA head coach. 

"I've played with some of the best players of this generation … and I've played under two of the sharpest minds in the history of sports, in Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich," Gasol wrote. "And I'm telling you: Becky Hammon can coach. I'm not saying she can coach pretty well. I'm not saying she can coach enough to get by. I'm not saying she can coach almost at the level of the NBA's male coaches. I'm saying: Becky Hammon can coach NBA basketball. Period."

Gasol also dispelled the notion that Hammon, the NBA's first female assistant coach, was hired by the Spurs because the optics were favorable for the franchise. 

"Would you really expect Coach Pop to develop his staff any differently than he develops his players? Of course not," he wrote. "Pop's only standard for doing anything is whether it'll help us in just one way…and it isn't getting good p.r. It's getting W's. And getting those W's The Spurs Way."

Hammon, who joined the Spurs as an assistant in 2014, is one of several candidates for the Milwaukee Bucks' vacant head-coaching position. According to ESPN.com's Adrian Wojnarowski, Hammon and former Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt will have interviews later this week before the Bucks hash out a list of finalists. 

Last month, Popovich told the New Yorker's Louisa Thomas that "it's going to take somebody who has some guts, some imagination, and is not driven by old standards and old forms" to hire Hammon. 

As it turns out, that team may be the Bucks.