Brittni Donaldson was almost literally born into basketball in Iowa, but even she could never have imagined her improbable path to becoming the league's 10th current female assistant coach, and the youngest at just 26 years old. Donaldson spent the last two seasons as a data analyst -- i.e., advanced stats guru -- in the Raptors' front office before Masai Ujiri, Toronto's president and alternate governor, and Nick Nurse, the head coach, picked her in mid-July to fill an opening on Toronto's bench.............
.................One highlight: The Raptors were on the road when they acquired Marc Gasol at the trade deadline, but Gasol had to visit Toronto to undergo a physical. He asked whether someone might run him through a workout. The team thought about calling one coach back in. Higher-ups decided Donaldson could handle it herself. "That was special for me -- to be basically the first person he interacted with on the basketball side," she says.
Ujiri watched from his office and was impressed when Donaldson sat with Gasol after the workout, opened a laptop, and took him through some of Toronto's plays. "We were confident Brittni could do it," Ujiri says. "But when you see her do it, it's different." Nurse made it clear Donaldson will not be "the analytics person" on the coaching staff, though she will take the lead translating such data for players and coaches. She will do everything the other coaches do: scout opponents, debate rotations and X's and O's, and pitch strategic ideas.
There is a lot more... https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27576018/the-unusual-path-new-raptors-assistant-coach-brittni-donaldson
