BUTCH’S TAKE
Ex-Nets coach Beard is frustrated by lack of Black executives in NBA
Butch Beard was never one to mince his words or hold back. He was like that as a player with the Knicks, then as a coach with the New Jersey Nets, and still today, at 73 years old, Beard will bluntly explain why he's pissed off about the lack of black NBA executives.
“The biggest problem is that ownership — I don't think people even understand this — they don't think we can organize, they don't think we're smart enough to organize,” Beard tells the Daily News. “And that bothers the s—t out of me. It really does. That's why you don't have any black people in the NBA offices as general managers, relative to the number of black athletes that you have. They don't think you're smart enough to do it.”
Beard's vast experiences have taught him to expect and identify prejudice, whether it's overt or veiled. And while growing up in the south during Jim Crow, it tended to be the former.
Beard, named the best player in Kentucky in 1965, remembers the mother of a seventhgrade teammate telling him, “Don't you ever knock on my door again.” When Adolph Rupp was recruiting Beard to become the first black player at the University of Kentucky, hate messengers arrived at his house “calling me the N-word, telling me if I go to Kentucky, we'll kill you,” Beard recalls.
“That leaves an impression on you the rest of your life,” says Beard, who instead chose Louisville.
Basketball carried Beard into the NBA as the 10th overall pick in 1969, the same year Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went first to the Bucks. Beard lost a season after being drafted into the army during the Vietnam War (although he never had to go into battle), and returned to become an All-Star with the Cavs and champion with the Warriors.
A future in coaching was forged as a player with the Knicks, where Beard began a mentorship under Red Holzman. But it wasn't easy prying
information from the Hall of Famer. At least not at first.
“I had to get stuff out of Red. Red had a little ‘5-by-8' index card that he brought to practice every day. And he had his practice plan on it. And I finally said, ‘Red, is that a secret?'” Beard says. “Eventually he started to tell me, ‘This is why we're starting to do this in practice, especially in camp, and this is the reason we're building up the defense this way.' These are the things I got from them.
“As far as I'm concerned, I learned from the best.”
Believing he needed to sell NBA teams head coaching experience, Beard took over at Howard University and led the program to its only NCAA Tournament appearance in the last 39 years. Despite that success, Beard recognized the challenges of steering an HBCU program without the same resources as the NCAA powerhouses (Beard later coached another HBCU program at Morgan State).
Now he has strong opinions about the NCAA's money machine exploiting its predominantly black athletes.
“It's the greatest plantation I've ever seen in my life,” Beard says. “Not only do they not want to pay the kids, they even give the coaches buyouts when they don't do a good job. If a guy leaves before his contract is up, they got to pay them $90 million or whatever it is. What the hell? Just pay the kids.
“They just want money. That's all they want — money. And the shoe companies know it. And the shoe companies are the ones who corrupted college basketball. And the colleges aren't going to fight the shoe companies because they need the damn money themselves from the shoe companies for sponsorships.”
The NCAA's Power 5 schools will lose more than $4 billion in revenue if the football season is canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to ESPN. The players aren't allowed to receive a dime of that revenue, but, in the case of Ohio State, the athletes had to sign a waiver acknowledging risk before participating in voluntary workouts.
“Who are they going to make that money off of? Off the backs of predominantly black kids,” Beard says. “And they don't give a s—t if they catch coronavirus and die.”
Beard parlayed his success at Howard into coaching the New Jersey Nets, taking over after Chuck Daly in 1994. It was a disappointment. Derrick Coleman, the team's star, was feuding with management, and that spilled into his relationship with Beard.
The dress code became a point of contention and controversy. Coleman wanted to wear custom-made sweatsuits, but Beard and management pushed for a cleaner image.
“I told him, ‘I don't like the idea of having a sport coat or a shirt or a tie at 3 a.m., but if we're traveling for back-to-back games and we're getting into another town in the afternoon, you run into the public, and there is a perception you should have,” Beard said. “And therefore, I'm OK with us having a dress code for that.”
Fines levied by Nets GM Willis Reed did nothing to dissuade Coleman, who famously said “whoopty-damn-do” when asked about teammate Kenny Anderson missing practice for an alleged trip to the strip club.
“Derrick and Willis fought tooth-and-nail all the time,” Beard says. “A guy who is making $67 million, Willis is fining him $5,000. I'm like, ‘Willis, please, that's like me fining you $5, please. C'mon.'”
Fighting with the star player became part of Beard's image in the NBA, even though time stamped Coleman as more malcontent than winner. Beard was fired after two seasons with a 60-104 record and was never again an NBA head coach.
Before Beard left New Jersey, he was one of only five black coaches in the NBA. Almost 25 years later, there are only eight. The ratio is worse at Division I NCAA basketball programs, and Beard explained how one university implicitly observed his race as a negative when considering him for an interview.
“The AD said, ‘I don't know if you will know how to handle the board,'” he recalls. Beard knew what that meant and withdrew his name.
“Those are the things that bother me a lot because it's almost like I can't even think,” he says. “I have no opinion.”
Beard has given up on coaching in the NBA again, discovering that his work with a youth basketball program in Louisville was more rewarding anyway.
He's spent the pandemic in Harlem, careful to stay safe while admiring the social justice movements from NBA players and others.
“You can't just look at black people as people who are here to entertain you by singing and dancing or playing a damn sport,” he says. “We matter.”
Although coaching is in the rearview mirror, Beard hopes an NBA team will see his worth as a consultant or executive. On Friday, commissioner Adam Silver, feeling pressure from the players and its union, acknowledged the NBA's shortcomings in hiring minorities in front offices.
Beard, a basketball lifer, understands his age might turn off teams but noted that somebody older has maintained his front-office position.
“I'm not knocking Jerry West, but Jerry West ain't the only one who knows basketball,” Beard says. “I like working with people. I just think I have something to offer, something positive, but if I'm the only one who thinks that that's life in the fast lane.”
Regardless, Beard will speak his mind.