It doesn’t take a genius to notice that the NBA is dominated by black athletes.
Over 80% of players in the league identify as people of color and some of the biggest – and well-known players in the game – are Black. What has been equally noticeable in the past, however, is that the percentage of Black coaches reaches nowhere near that number.
The current NBA regular season is reaching its enthralling zenith, with the postseason looking like it is going to be one of the best in recent history. Fans of all teams will be getting ready to make predictions and place the best NBA bets. It is incredibly likely that the MVP will be a Black man – and now the coach might be as well. At the start of this season, there were 11 Black head coaches – including one who led his team to the championship last year. But surely we should be expecting more from the NBA.
The legendary Bill Russell was the first-ever Black head coach in the league, of course. He was far from the first choice at the time, however. The story goes that Red Auerbach retired before the end of the 1966-67 season, with his own views on who would take over. Three different people turned down the role, one of whom refused on the grounds that he didn’t think that he could control Russell as a player. He may have only been fourth in line for the job but Bill Russell became the player-coach in April 1967 and ended up taking the Celtics to two championships, back-to-back, before retiring from the game at the end of the 1968-69 season.
Al Attles was the next Black player-coach, taking over at the Philadelphia Warriors midway through the very next season. Lenny Wilkens was also named player-coach of the Seattle Supersonics in the same year. It would take both of them a little longer than Bill Russell, but they also coached a team to the championship. Although those three obviously paved the way for the Black head coaches of today, there is still something of a discrepancy when it comes to the number of coaches, compared to how many of the league’s athletes are Black.
With those initial barriers broken down, there might be some who think that the opportunities are now plentiful and available to Black coaches in the NBA. Proving that they can win a championship is one thing, but the vast majority of Black head coaches don’t get the same chances. Around 1 in 3 head coaches since Bill Russell’s appointment have been Black but they have not always been fairly treated. It has been very noticeable that many are not given the time to grow into the role and develop and, once they have been fired, it is much harder for a Black coach to find another job quickly. Those are just two reasons why parity has not yet been achieved in the NBA.
There has been a change in recent years in the league though.
After recognizing that some of the most talented, young Black coaches did not seem to be getting the opportunities to interview for positions – let alone, fill them – the NBA led the way in making teams aware of the qualifications and programs that coaches could take to put themselves in a better position to make the step up. There was further dialogue between league officials and inclusion officers, which ultimately led to the launch of the NBA Coaches Equality Initiative in 2019. This allowed everyone to access information pertinent to developing and appointing more head coaches who were people of color. Just three years later, half of the 30 teams in the NBA had Black head coaches.
Two years after that there were two Black coaches going against each other in the NBA Finals. Jason Kidd and Joe Mazzulla, of the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics respectively, became only the third such pairing in the history of the competition. Mike Brown at Golden State and Tyronn Lue at Cleveland had preceded them by seven years, while the first-ever NBA Finals with both teams coached by Black men had occurred in 1975. Al Attles, at Golden State by that time, and K.C. Jones at Washington, became the names that would forever go down in history.
Although there are fewer Black head coaches in the league than a few years ago, it can probably not be put down to discrimination but more likely just the availability of talent at the time. Black coaches are no longer a novelty. There might still not be as many chances for them to succeed than for their White counterparts, but there is definitely more opportunity than even just 20 years ago. However, it is the situation further up the organization hierarchy that now needs addressing.
Since Michael Jordan stepped down from the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, there have been no Black majority owners in the NBA.
He had succeeded the first-ever Black owner, Robert Johnson when the team was still called the Bobcats. There are more Black minority owners these days – with many of them being former players – and a few non-white owners across the league, but still no more Black majority owners.
The main reason for this would seem to be more societal than sporting. To become an owner in one of the richest leagues in the world, you have to be very rich yourself. There are not that many Black billionaires, so that reduces the pool already. Although there could be more, there is a healthier number of Black coaches these days. But, until society changes as a whole, it seems unlikely that there will be more power given to Black people at the very top of the game.
