David Leonhardt and Ford Fessenden have an intriguing piece in today’s New York Times concerning black coaches in the NBA. Their two core findings are as follows:
Over the last decade, black N.B.A. coaches have lasted an average of just 1.6 seasons, compared with 2.4 seasons for white coaches. That means the typical white coach lasts almost 50 percent longer and has most of an extra season to prove himself.
The pattern holds in almost any important category of coaches. Winning black coaches have been replaced sooner than winning white coaches on average, and experienced black coaches have served shorter tenures than experienced white coaches. The same is true among losing coaches, among rookie coaches and among coaches who played in the N.B.A. and those who did not.
For these reasons, a number of black coaches are expressing frustration with what appears to be race-influenced decisions on the part of NBA general managers and owners. For instance, Paul Silas, who was fired yesterday by the Cleveland Cavaliers, finds that, "[o]ur white counterparts are given more the benefit of the doubt. Things have changed dramatically in our society, but it still has a long way to go."
From a legal standpoint, these coaches have several options. For instance, they could file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the NBA and individual teams. Considering that NBA teams with similar records are indeed terminating black coaches sooner than white coaches, such a claim might warrant considerable attention, especially if the coaches could somehow demonstrate collusion among NBA owners and front offices. Also, as a group or individually, these coaches might consider wrongful-termination claims against NBA teams—and discharge due to race is certainly a cognizable claim that courts take very seriously.
However, there would be a number of hurdles to any such legal action.
First, there is the very practical: a coach who participates in such a claim might fear that he will never get another job in the NBA. That is, the prospect of being stigmatized as “one of those guys who sued the NBA” might be sufficiently deterring.
There are substantive challenges as well. For instance, just because black coaches are fired sooner may not—by itself—reveal anything, unless there is a corresponding control for quality of teams, as well as stability of front offices and ownership groups. Another needed metric might be where the coach was previously employed. For instance, I suspect NBA coaches (black or white) who just rose from college coaching positions are fired sooner than are other coaches, but only because college coaches tend to take over inferior NBA teams.
Another hurdle might be the significant number of “recycled” coaches (i.e., those who have been fired and then hired by another team) who are black. For instance, though Paul Silas has been fired four times, he has also been hired four times. Also consider Doc Rivers, head coach of the Atlantic Division-leading Boston Celtics. He was fired last year by the Orlando Magic, but months later was awarded a 4-year, $20 million contract by the Celtics—whose general manager, Danny Ainge, and Managing Partner, Wyc Grousbeck, are white. Lenny Wilkens has been fired several times, but always seems to reappear somewhere, every year. Bernie Bickerstaff was the head coach of some horrid Denver Nuggets teams, but after being fired by the Nuggets, the expansion Charlotte Bobcats (who are owned by Robert Johnson, who is black) made him not only their head coach, but their general manager as well. Recently fired Johnny Davis of the Orlando Magic had been head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers before. In other words, to the extent it is true that black coaches get the hook sooner than white coaches, they, like recycled white coaches, nevertheless seem to reappear later.
Also meaningful might be how black coaches are treated relative to other groups. For instance, how are women coaches treated in the NBA? Well, there aren’t any. And for that reason, I wonder if women might have a better argument for discrimination. Pat Summitt—who is on the verge of breaking Dean Smith’s record for most Division I wins—has (to my knowledge) never had even a sniff of an NBA job. And as we discussed earlier this year, there is already considerable evidence that women coaches of men’s teams are treated poorly by management and ownership (see 1/30/05 post on Ashley McElhiney of the Nashville Rhythm of the American Basketball Association).
I also wonder about other potential “trends” among all coaches. For instance, do American coaches get the gate sooner in the NHL than do Canadian coaches, or is it vice-versa? And how about overweight coaches, or short coaches, or old coaches? And are coaches from “laid back” west-coast backgrounds afforded fewer breaks than are intense guys from the northeast? Similarly, are MLB managers of Latino descent cut the same rope when their teams go bad as are white managers, or black managers? And in women’s basketball, are male and female coaches treated similarly by athletic directors? Lastly, if Rick Pitino and John Calipari had instead been named "Rick Smith" and "John Harrison", would they have been fired so quickly by the Celtics and Nets, respectively? Or were they actually cut more slack because of their Italian heritage?
I have no idea how to answer to any of these questions.
And that is really the point: there are so many interpretive characteristics evident in each coach that, absent proof beyond naked statistics, it is difficult to conclude there is racism (or sexism, or cultural discrimination). That’s not to say black coaches aren’t afforded fewer breaks than are white coaches, as the numbers revealed in the New York Times article are indeed troubling. Moreover, as noted in the article, black persons tend to be fired sooner in many professions, thus lending credibility to the idea that one's race may accelerate how quickly one is discharged. But, at the same time, drawing absolute assertions from NBA statistics has its own set of drawbacks, particularly given the scope of variables among NBA coaches, not the least of which includes quality of players’ coached and relative stability of ownership and management groups.
File under: intriguing and alarming, but still more evidence needed.
Update: For an engaging economic view of this topic, see Skip's post over at The Sports Economist
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