The NBA’s Summer of Race
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...830610-3c25-11e4-a430-b82a3e67b762_story.html
The defining story of the NBA offseason could have been LeBron James’s triumphant return to his home state to heal the hurt of his previous defection. But while that homecoming dominated the early days of the summer, the predominant theme has now shifted from a reunion to a rift.
With Donald Sterling removed from the NBA and forced to sell the Los Angeles Clippers, Atlanta Hawks majority owner Bruce Levenson voluntarily selling his franchise and General Manager Danny Ferry taking an indefinite leave of absence, this offseason is forcing the league to confront the delicate issue of race. The situations with the Clippers and Hawks differ in scale and context but have brought to light the complicated dance for a league in which more than three-quarters of the players are black while coaching, management and especially ownership is overwhelmingly white. While complicated, it’s a dance the NBA has performed gracefully for some time.
“If those things had taken place in any of the other leagues, I would be significantly more concerned than I was about that being some trend in the NBA,” said Richard Lapchick, founder and director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. “We can always do better. Anybody can. But the NBA, among all of the leagues, is more in tune with moving in the right direction in terms of diversity and inclusion than all of the other leagues. And that’s been the case for a long time.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acted quickly to banish Sterling, and his long history of appalling acts toward minorities and women, after the former owner was secretly taped making disparaging comments about African Americans. Levenson and Ferry had no documented history of racial incidents, but their objectionable words — Levenson blamed blacks for driving away white fans at Hawks games in an e-mail to Ferry and other business partners; Ferry relayed comments from a background report that equated a lack of character with Luol Deng’s African heritage — caused considerable damage in a community that has a large black population.
During his 30-year run as commissioner, Silver’s predecessor, David Stern, was able to navigate the NBA through some situations that featured some racial undertones, from the rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to a more in-your-face, hip-hop infused generation that eventually led to the creation of the league’s dress code. In his first few months since taking over from Stern in February, Silver has had to guide the league during a period when privacy has fallen victim to smartphones and any inappropriate utterance behind closed doors could lead to dramatic consequences.
After Levenson announced he was selling his majority stake in the Hawks franchise, Silver said the NBA would “redouble” its efforts to promote diversity and anti-discrimination policies. Hawks CEO Steve Koonin, who has been placed in charge of the franchise until the team is sold, also plans to create a chief diversity officer position within the organization.
“You have inappropriate thoughts, it’s going to get exposed,” Shropshire said. “That may have more impact on people than any kind of diversity training or anything else. . . . That could be the good we see. There’s more progress than we could’ve had otherwise.”
Shropshire noted the impact controversial comments from former Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Al Campanis and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder about African Americans’ capacity to run professional sports teams during interviews in the late 1980s had in creating more management and coaching opportunities for minorities.
Wayne Embry became the first black general manager in any of the major professional sports when he was assigned to run the Milwaukee Bucks in 1972. A five-time all-star with the Cincinnati Royals, Embry entered the NBA in 1958 and recalls a time when he was the only black player on his team and when others speculated that fans would not support a product that featured a team with more than three black players.
“Then Red Auerbach jumped out there and started five and, of course, won championships” in Boston, Embry said with a laugh in a recent telephone interview. “That, I think, made owners realize we need to be color blind in a sense and get the best players available.”
Lapchick issues an annual racial and gender report card and gave the NBA an A-plus for racial-hiring practices in the 2013-14 season. Last season, the NBA had 13 coaches and seven general managers of color and set a new record for assistant coaches of color at 46.7 percent. Silver also hired Mark Batum as the league’s first black deputy commissioner. Eleven of the league’s 30 teams had more than one vice president of color.
But Michael Jordan and Vivek Ranadivé are the only non-white NBA owners, a club that has become increasingly more exclusive with each of the last three franchise purchases going for more than $500 million, including Steve Ballmer’s record $2 billion deal for the Clippers.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘We need more black owners.’ But where are they going to come from? The ownership issue is a bigger issue,” said Todd Boyd, professor of race and popular culture at Southern Cal. “This is not the NBA’s fault that black people were denied the opportunity to advance economically. That’s not their fault at all. That speaks to the nature of the country we live in. . . . But there is nothing prohibiting teams in the NBA from hiring people in positions of authority across the board. You don’t need to accumulate wealth to be an NBA general manager or president of a club or operate in other capacities in the league.”
Lapchick has given the NBA high praise for being one of the more progressive leagues, with baseball and football only recently making efforts toward catching up. The NBA hired Lapchick to provide diversity training seminars after the lockout ended in 1999, a move that Stern and then deputy commissioner Russ Granik felt was necessary following an incident two years earlier in which John Calipari, then a coach with the New Jersey Nets, called a reporter a “Mexican idiot.”
Silver’s action in the wake of Sterling’s taped comments was considerably more extreme, leading Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to warn of a “slippery slope” for acceptable moral behavior. Silver supported Levenson’s decision to sell the team but didn’t believe Ferry’s actions were a “terminable” offense.
Shropshire felt Silver’s rapid expulsion of Sterling halted a conversation that could have persisted and opened up a deeper examination into the attitudes and opinions of other owners. Boyd agreed.
“In general, you have a lot of people when they look at the NBA make a lot of racists assumptions, whether they articulate these assumptions or not. Anytime you have something that is this black in terms of the population, you are going to have issues,” Boyd said. “On the other hand, the NBA has made a lot of black millionaires, and we can’t ignore that. It has brought a lot of people to prominence and visibility and changed their lives. It has given people the opportunity to make a good living and become stars.”
Embry has witnessed the improvements for blacks in everyday society and within the NBA and said he doesn’t want to see this country revert to a time when attitudes and thoughts were less progressive.
“We made progress, but we still have a way to go,” Embry said. “I wish we didn’t have to discuss these issues, but we do because they keep popping up. I think you’ll see the NBA will take steps. We can’t have another summer like we’ve had this year.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...830610-3c25-11e4-a430-b82a3e67b762_story.html
The defining story of the NBA offseason could have been LeBron James’s triumphant return to his home state to heal the hurt of his previous defection. But while that homecoming dominated the early days of the summer, the predominant theme has now shifted from a reunion to a rift.
With Donald Sterling removed from the NBA and forced to sell the Los Angeles Clippers, Atlanta Hawks majority owner Bruce Levenson voluntarily selling his franchise and General Manager Danny Ferry taking an indefinite leave of absence, this offseason is forcing the league to confront the delicate issue of race. The situations with the Clippers and Hawks differ in scale and context but have brought to light the complicated dance for a league in which more than three-quarters of the players are black while coaching, management and especially ownership is overwhelmingly white. While complicated, it’s a dance the NBA has performed gracefully for some time.
“If those things had taken place in any of the other leagues, I would be significantly more concerned than I was about that being some trend in the NBA,” said Richard Lapchick, founder and director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. “We can always do better. Anybody can. But the NBA, among all of the leagues, is more in tune with moving in the right direction in terms of diversity and inclusion than all of the other leagues. And that’s been the case for a long time.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acted quickly to banish Sterling, and his long history of appalling acts toward minorities and women, after the former owner was secretly taped making disparaging comments about African Americans. Levenson and Ferry had no documented history of racial incidents, but their objectionable words — Levenson blamed blacks for driving away white fans at Hawks games in an e-mail to Ferry and other business partners; Ferry relayed comments from a background report that equated a lack of character with Luol Deng’s African heritage — caused considerable damage in a community that has a large black population.
During his 30-year run as commissioner, Silver’s predecessor, David Stern, was able to navigate the NBA through some situations that featured some racial undertones, from the rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to a more in-your-face, hip-hop infused generation that eventually led to the creation of the league’s dress code. In his first few months since taking over from Stern in February, Silver has had to guide the league during a period when privacy has fallen victim to smartphones and any inappropriate utterance behind closed doors could lead to dramatic consequences.
After Levenson announced he was selling his majority stake in the Hawks franchise, Silver said the NBA would “redouble” its efforts to promote diversity and anti-discrimination policies. Hawks CEO Steve Koonin, who has been placed in charge of the franchise until the team is sold, also plans to create a chief diversity officer position within the organization.
Kenneth Shropshire, professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative, believes modern technology and social media also could be an effective means to produce a needed change through what Harry Edwards, professor emeritus of sociology at California-Berkeley and a former consultant for the San Francisco 49ers and Golden State Warriors dubbed an “electronic lynch mob situation.”
“You have inappropriate thoughts, it’s going to get exposed,” Shropshire said. “That may have more impact on people than any kind of diversity training or anything else. . . . That could be the good we see. There’s more progress than we could’ve had otherwise.”
Shropshire noted the impact controversial comments from former Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Al Campanis and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder about African Americans’ capacity to run professional sports teams during interviews in the late 1980s had in creating more management and coaching opportunities for minorities.
Wayne Embry became the first black general manager in any of the major professional sports when he was assigned to run the Milwaukee Bucks in 1972. A five-time all-star with the Cincinnati Royals, Embry entered the NBA in 1958 and recalls a time when he was the only black player on his team and when others speculated that fans would not support a product that featured a team with more than three black players.
“Then Red Auerbach jumped out there and started five and, of course, won championships” in Boston, Embry said with a laugh in a recent telephone interview. “That, I think, made owners realize we need to be color blind in a sense and get the best players available.”
Lapchick issues an annual racial and gender report card and gave the NBA an A-plus for racial-hiring practices in the 2013-14 season. Last season, the NBA had 13 coaches and seven general managers of color and set a new record for assistant coaches of color at 46.7 percent. Silver also hired Mark Batum as the league’s first black deputy commissioner. Eleven of the league’s 30 teams had more than one vice president of color.
But Michael Jordan and Vivek Ranadivé are the only non-white NBA owners, a club that has become increasingly more exclusive with each of the last three franchise purchases going for more than $500 million, including Steve Ballmer’s record $2 billion deal for the Clippers.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘We need more black owners.’ But where are they going to come from? The ownership issue is a bigger issue,” said Todd Boyd, professor of race and popular culture at Southern Cal. “This is not the NBA’s fault that black people were denied the opportunity to advance economically. That’s not their fault at all. That speaks to the nature of the country we live in. . . . But there is nothing prohibiting teams in the NBA from hiring people in positions of authority across the board. You don’t need to accumulate wealth to be an NBA general manager or president of a club or operate in other capacities in the league.”
Lapchick has given the NBA high praise for being one of the more progressive leagues, with baseball and football only recently making efforts toward catching up. The NBA hired Lapchick to provide diversity training seminars after the lockout ended in 1999, a move that Stern and then deputy commissioner Russ Granik felt was necessary following an incident two years earlier in which John Calipari, then a coach with the New Jersey Nets, called a reporter a “Mexican idiot.”
Silver’s action in the wake of Sterling’s taped comments was considerably more extreme, leading Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to warn of a “slippery slope” for acceptable moral behavior. Silver supported Levenson’s decision to sell the team but didn’t believe Ferry’s actions were a “terminable” offense.
Shropshire felt Silver’s rapid expulsion of Sterling halted a conversation that could have persisted and opened up a deeper examination into the attitudes and opinions of other owners. Boyd agreed.
“In general, you have a lot of people when they look at the NBA make a lot of racists assumptions, whether they articulate these assumptions or not. Anytime you have something that is this black in terms of the population, you are going to have issues,” Boyd said. “On the other hand, the NBA has made a lot of black millionaires, and we can’t ignore that. It has brought a lot of people to prominence and visibility and changed their lives. It has given people the opportunity to make a good living and become stars.”
Embry has witnessed the improvements for blacks in everyday society and within the NBA and said he doesn’t want to see this country revert to a time when attitudes and thoughts were less progressive.
“We made progress, but we still have a way to go,” Embry said. “I wish we didn’t have to discuss these issues, but we do because they keep popping up. I think you’ll see the NBA will take steps. We can’t have another summer like we’ve had this year.”
