alamo50
01-16-2006, 11:01 AM
BY DAVID ALDRIDGE
Philadelphia Inquirer
Monday in Washington, the 76ers will play the Wizards. The rare afternoon contest is part of a 12-game NBA schedule, the league's way of honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his holiday.
Coaching the Sixers will be Maurice Cheeks. Coaching the Wizards, Eddie Jordan.
Both are African American.
It will be an occasion marked by . . . absolutely nothing.
There will be no hosannas, no network break-ins. For it will mark about the thousandth time or so that two black men have coached against each other in the NBA. It's an old story, utterly unworthy of mention.
But it's that very unworthiness that is, well, worth mentioning.
For it shows how far ahead the NBA remains of its major pro sports competitors when it comes to giving nonplaying job opportunities to people of color - race is just about irrelevant.
Cheeks and Jordan are among 11 African American head coaches. For the last few years, a third or so of the NBA's head coaches have been black. It is not that way in the NFL (six African Americans are head coaches, an all-time high), or Major League Baseball (with five black or Latino managers - including Ozzie Guillen of the world champion Chicago White Sox).
But this isn't about raw numbers as much as attitude.
The NBA never needed a Fritz Pollard Alliance to assure that the NFL knew about and considered black people for coaching positions. It didn't need the Rooney Rule, named for Steelers president Dan Rooney, that requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority for head coaching jobs.
While an African American coach has never won the Super Bowl, basketball's world championship was claimed by an African American coach more than 37 years ago - when Bill Russell's Celtics won the 1968 title, with Russell leading the way as player-coach.
Four years after Russell won a title as a coach, in 1972, the Milwaukee Bucks made Wayne Embry the first African American general manager in sports. And ex-players from Elgin Baylor to Isiah Thomas to Joe Dumars have had chances to run teams over the last three decades.
The disparity between the NBA and other leagues is smaller than it was a few years ago, but it's still there. Why is a matter of debate.
"Maybe it's Red and Russell," NBA commissioner David Stern said by telephone last week. He referred to Red Auerbach and Russell, and the partnership between the two that led to Auerbach's handing of the Celtics to Russell in 1966, making Russell the first African American head coach in modern pro sports.
Time makes distant the significance of that hire. Remember, Russell got the Celtics job when the franchise was at the height of its dynasty. It would be like Casey Stengel stepping down from the Yankees job in 1956 and announcing that Elston Howard, the catcher who was the first African American to play for the Bronx Bombers, was taking his place.
Baseball's Bud Selig and the NFL's Paul Tagliabue have both been strong advocates for more minority hiring in their sports, and Tagliabue has backed it up behind the scenes and in public by getting owners to comply with the Rooney Rule. (His answers on why the rule isn't used at the general-manager level as well, however, are not compelling.)
But Stern has gotten more results from his rhetoric.
He downplays his role, saying his biggest desire was to make sure that teams hired more African American assistant coaches.
"We understood the imperative years ago," Stern said, "when Russ (Granik, the deputy commissioner) and I (made sure) that owners were made aware that having a coaching staff that didn't offer a sort of diversity, especially at the assistant coaching level, didn't make a lot of sense. And maybe they weren't being as well-served as they could be by their general managers."
In the years since, benches have filled with former black players - both superstars and ham-and-eggers. And some, by dint of their work and intelligence, have become head coaches.
"You can rest assured that Russ and I have worked this over the years," Stern said, "and that we don't work it now. Because the system is working itself. It's all about winning."
Young black assistants still grumble on occasion that they're shunted to the worst jobs and then asked to work miracles. But that's true for lots of young white assistants, too. And things are changing.
Dwane Casey's first NBA head coaching job is in Minnesota, where Kevin Garnett is good for 45 wins pretty much by himself. Mike Brown is getting LeBron James right out of the gate in Cleveland.
Of late, African American NBA coaches have been allowed to be as good - or as mediocre - as their white counterparts. If Byron Scott isn't getting it done in New Jersey, he's gone, but he's not forgotten. Lenny Wilkens became the league's all-time winningest coach because he was hired again and again. Both Jordan and Cheeks have been fired, but they were given second chances elsewhere, just like the Dick Mottas and Don Nelsons of the world.
There's no better legacy for Dr. King on his day. When it comes to hiring and firing - and rehiring and re-firing - in the NBA, a man is judged not by the color of his skin, but, at least in part, by the content of his won-loss record.
Link (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/basketball/nba/13634768.htm)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Monday in Washington, the 76ers will play the Wizards. The rare afternoon contest is part of a 12-game NBA schedule, the league's way of honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his holiday.
Coaching the Sixers will be Maurice Cheeks. Coaching the Wizards, Eddie Jordan.
Both are African American.
It will be an occasion marked by . . . absolutely nothing.
There will be no hosannas, no network break-ins. For it will mark about the thousandth time or so that two black men have coached against each other in the NBA. It's an old story, utterly unworthy of mention.
But it's that very unworthiness that is, well, worth mentioning.
For it shows how far ahead the NBA remains of its major pro sports competitors when it comes to giving nonplaying job opportunities to people of color - race is just about irrelevant.
Cheeks and Jordan are among 11 African American head coaches. For the last few years, a third or so of the NBA's head coaches have been black. It is not that way in the NFL (six African Americans are head coaches, an all-time high), or Major League Baseball (with five black or Latino managers - including Ozzie Guillen of the world champion Chicago White Sox).
But this isn't about raw numbers as much as attitude.
The NBA never needed a Fritz Pollard Alliance to assure that the NFL knew about and considered black people for coaching positions. It didn't need the Rooney Rule, named for Steelers president Dan Rooney, that requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority for head coaching jobs.
While an African American coach has never won the Super Bowl, basketball's world championship was claimed by an African American coach more than 37 years ago - when Bill Russell's Celtics won the 1968 title, with Russell leading the way as player-coach.
Four years after Russell won a title as a coach, in 1972, the Milwaukee Bucks made Wayne Embry the first African American general manager in sports. And ex-players from Elgin Baylor to Isiah Thomas to Joe Dumars have had chances to run teams over the last three decades.
The disparity between the NBA and other leagues is smaller than it was a few years ago, but it's still there. Why is a matter of debate.
"Maybe it's Red and Russell," NBA commissioner David Stern said by telephone last week. He referred to Red Auerbach and Russell, and the partnership between the two that led to Auerbach's handing of the Celtics to Russell in 1966, making Russell the first African American head coach in modern pro sports.
Time makes distant the significance of that hire. Remember, Russell got the Celtics job when the franchise was at the height of its dynasty. It would be like Casey Stengel stepping down from the Yankees job in 1956 and announcing that Elston Howard, the catcher who was the first African American to play for the Bronx Bombers, was taking his place.
Baseball's Bud Selig and the NFL's Paul Tagliabue have both been strong advocates for more minority hiring in their sports, and Tagliabue has backed it up behind the scenes and in public by getting owners to comply with the Rooney Rule. (His answers on why the rule isn't used at the general-manager level as well, however, are not compelling.)
But Stern has gotten more results from his rhetoric.
He downplays his role, saying his biggest desire was to make sure that teams hired more African American assistant coaches.
"We understood the imperative years ago," Stern said, "when Russ (Granik, the deputy commissioner) and I (made sure) that owners were made aware that having a coaching staff that didn't offer a sort of diversity, especially at the assistant coaching level, didn't make a lot of sense. And maybe they weren't being as well-served as they could be by their general managers."
In the years since, benches have filled with former black players - both superstars and ham-and-eggers. And some, by dint of their work and intelligence, have become head coaches.
"You can rest assured that Russ and I have worked this over the years," Stern said, "and that we don't work it now. Because the system is working itself. It's all about winning."
Young black assistants still grumble on occasion that they're shunted to the worst jobs and then asked to work miracles. But that's true for lots of young white assistants, too. And things are changing.
Dwane Casey's first NBA head coaching job is in Minnesota, where Kevin Garnett is good for 45 wins pretty much by himself. Mike Brown is getting LeBron James right out of the gate in Cleveland.
Of late, African American NBA coaches have been allowed to be as good - or as mediocre - as their white counterparts. If Byron Scott isn't getting it done in New Jersey, he's gone, but he's not forgotten. Lenny Wilkens became the league's all-time winningest coach because he was hired again and again. Both Jordan and Cheeks have been fired, but they were given second chances elsewhere, just like the Dick Mottas and Don Nelsons of the world.
There's no better legacy for Dr. King on his day. When it comes to hiring and firing - and rehiring and re-firing - in the NBA, a man is judged not by the color of his skin, but, at least in part, by the content of his won-loss record.
Link (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/basketball/nba/13634768.htm)