League scores high marks in race, gender report card
The NBA continues to score high marks and set the bar for other professional sports leagues in racial and gender diversity, according to a new report released Thursday by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
A week before the NBA is poised resume play at ESPN Wide of Sports with a commitment to combating racism and social injustice during the coronavirus pandemic, the league earned an A+ for racial hiring practices with a score of 96.2 points and a B for gender hiring practices with 82.0 points in a report compiled by UCF’s TIDES group.
People of color working in general manager positions hit a 24-year high, with the 1.9 percentage point increase to 28.0%. Nine NBA teams had either a woman or person of color as the majority team owner, exceeding the other men’s leagues. The NBA is the only league office that has two women who serve as presidents.
At the team level, the six women serving as a CEO or president — more than all other American men’s professional sport leagues combined.
The number of head coaches of color in the NBA decreased by one to nine during the 2019-2020 season, but it increased to 10 by the restart of the season.
The NBA featured nine female assistant coaches, the highest in league history. The day the report was released, San Antonio Spurs assistant Becky Hammond operated as the team’s head coach during a scrimmage.
Hammond is widely seen as one of the top contenders to become the NBA’s first female head coach.
The grades didn’t surprise Richard Lapchick, a UCF professor, director of TIDES and longtime human rights activist.
“David Stern set the tone himself when he first became commissioner,” Lapchick told the Orlando Sentinel. “When he took over the league [in 1984], people called it ‘too Black.’ It was ‘drug infested.’ … He immediately said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘We’re going to put the best players on the court and the best people in the offices.’ It’s as simple as that. They really followed that guidance and never needed a Rooney rule or anything else.
“Adam Silver’s statement about [former Clippers owner] Donald Sterling [who was recorded making racist remarks] when he first took over really solidified him as a leader on social justice issues as well as somoene who was going to work well with the players.”
While the NBA has embraced working with players to fight social injustice and has Black Lives Matter painted on all NBA restart courts at Disney World, the league is not immune from gender discrimination issues.
The Dallas Mavericks have worked to address a 2018 report of widespread sexual harassment and a toxic work environment for women within the franchise. Owner Mark Cuban recently called his failure to stop the harassment “disturbing and heartbreaking” during a recent interview with the Dallas Morning News, urging Washington NFL team owner Dan Snyder to accept the mistakes he made allowing the same issue to take hold within his organization.
Lapchick said his team did gender violence and gender sensitivity training for 20 of the NBA teams after the Mavericks’ issues came to light, with the remaining teams getting their training from other organizations.
“I think we live in a sexist climate in America, but I don’t see that in the NBA anywhere near as much as other leagues,” he said.
While the NBA’s grades are far better than other leagues, Lapchick said other commissioners have embraced the importance of diversity and players have found their voices amid a nationwide push back against racial inequality.
“Players haven’t quite focused on hiring practices yet, but once they take up that issue, I think they’ll find they can have a pretty powerful influence,” he said.