NBA needs a Rooney Rule
MONDAY, 34-year-old Koby Altman became one of the few black general managers in the NBA, joining other minority front-office members like Knicks GM Scott Perry and team president Steve Mills, when the Cleveland Cavaliers gave him control of one of the most captivating teams in the league.
However, Altman’s hiring comes at a peculiar time. The position was vacant because former Cavs GM David Griffin and owner Dan Gilbert couldn’t agree on a contract. The job was then offered to Chauncey Billups, who eventually turned it down.
But no matter if Altman or Billups would have been the man in charge, they still would have been only the third black GM of the 30 in the league.
That’s only 10%. Altman, Perry and Dell Demps (Pelicans).
Add that to there being a total of only six general managers and presidents of basketball operations that are black in the NBA, and you can start to see the lack of diversity in front offices, especially when you realize that about 75% of the league is black.
Which is why the NBA needs its own version of the Rooney Rule. Because right now, the league is telling us that it’s cool for blacks to be the face of a franchise, but not the leader of a team’s brain trust.
The Rooney Rule was established in 2003 and is named after former Pittsburgh Steelers president Dan Rooney, who was a champion for diversity. The rule requires teams in the league to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations jobs. Far too many times black coaches and executives were getting ignored, and the rule at least puts them in the pipeline to get actual interviews and some face time with organizations. By year three, the number of black coaches in the NFL jumped from 3% to 22. The system isn’t perfect, but it helps. The biggest part of an NBA general manager’s job isn’t deciding who gets traded and who gets signed or determining the inner working of a player’s contract. Managing egos and putting together the right personalities on a team trumps everything else.
And there can be a disconnect when 90% of GMs are white when almost 80% of the players are black.
For instance, this summer we saw some big-name free agents sign bigmoney deals, but only two of them, Gordon Hayward and J.J. Redick, were white.
Steph Curry re-signed with the Warriors for $201 million. James Harden committed to staying in Houston after signing an extension that will pay him $228 million over the next six years. John Wall added another $170 million to his bank account after signing on to remain in the nation’s capital, and players like Otto Porter, Blake Griffin, and Kyle Lowry all re-signed to stay on in Washington, Los Angeles and Toronto, respectively, for big bucks.
Hayward signed a four-year-deal with the Celtics for $128 million, as Redick opted for a one-year-deal with the Sixers that will pay him $23 million for his services.
Black players may be cleaning up in contract negotiations, but they aren’t seeing anyone who looks like them on the opposite side of the negotiating table.
However, a new program is working to change things. The NBA’s Leadership Development Program was held earlier this month in Las Vegas during the NBA Summer League and is an initiative by the NBA Players Association that serves as a training, or boot camp, for players who want to get involved with team operations and management.
Currently, only three black former players hold positions in the league as a general manager or president of basketball operations: Magic Johnson (Lakers), Doc Rivers (Clippers) and Demps. Of the 24 current and former players who were involved in this year’s program, 17 of them were black.
If you take a look at the bottom 10 teams in the NBA from last season based on their records, you’ll see that three of them had a black GM or president of basketball operations.
However, this is one of those occasions where numbers might not necessarily lie, but they can be deceiving.
Johnson has been progressive this offseason with adding players to his roster and drafting Lonzo Ball, giving the Lakers a possible shot at making the playoffs. Demps brought in DeMarcus Cousins to pair with Anthony Davis late last season as New Orleans looks to use the two best big men in the league as the cornerstones of their franchise.
And Perry will begin to clean up Phil Jackson’s mess with the Knicks.
Black and other diversity hires have proven their legitimacy when given chances to run a franchise or be a head coach in the NBA.
And with the first woman to ever run a major American professional sports player’s union, Michele Roberts, now is the time for the league and its players to create a system in which the people who work in the front office start looking like the ones who play on the court.