The National Basketball Association received an overall grade of “A” in the 2019 Racial and Gender Report Card just issued by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) report card issued on Tuesday, the National Basketball Association (NBA) earned an overall “A+” for racial hiring and a “B” for gender hiring, putting the league far above all other men’s professional sports leagues.
Using data from the 2018-19 season, TIDES analyzed racial breakdowns of players and coaches. The report card also includes examination of the racial and gender breakdown of management at various levels in the NBA League Office as well as within the 30 NBA teams. The racial hiring grade at the NBA League Office is “A+” while the grade for gender hiring is “B+”.
The data clearly indicates that racial hiring outpaces gender hiring, particularly at the team level. The racial hiring grade for NBA team vice presidents and above is “a B+” and the gender hiring grade for similar positions is “D+”. The racial hiring grade for NBA team management is “A+”, whereas the gender hiring grade is a “C”.
“The data shows significant hires during the year and it shows individual places where important things have happened, like with the Dallas Mavericks where Cynt Marshall [an African-American woman] became the team CEO,” said Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of TIDES and primary author of the report card.
“In spite of the NBA being in a leadership position on gender hiring practices—and this is my area of concern across all the leagues—we continue to see declining numbers for gender hiring,” he added. “The NBA has had four consecutive years of minor decreases in the overall gender hiring practices grade and that is something we note very carefully and pay attention to.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has called for more gender diversity among NBA referees and coaches. Lapchick said the only way to change the numbers is for teams to make sure there is a diverse pool of candidates for every significant hire. This includes the senior-most positions, such as team president and general manager. There are seven women serving as either team president or CEO, which is more than all other men’s professional sports leagues combined, but it is still a low percentage in terms of the NBA’s 30 teams.
