But put the topic of playing ability to the side for a moment. Where the NBA laps and relaps the field is in the area of authority. All this discussion about the paucity of black coaches and managers in football and base ball is so much Sanskrit to those of us who follow the NBA, where black coaches have been coming and going and coming and going and coming and going for 40-plus years.
Unless there's been a change in the last five minutes (you'd be wise to check), the NBA has nine black head coaches. Two of them replaced fired black head coaches, something that has been going on in this league since the Detroit Pistons fired Earl Lloyd and replaced him with assistant Ray Scott in 1972, when Barack Obama was 11 years old and living in Honolulu.
Entering the 2008-09 season, there had been 75 black coaching appointments in the history of the league covering 47 individuals. The list includes familiar names such as Lenny Wilkens (the all-time winningest NBA coach), Al Attles, K.C. Jones, Nate McMillan, Doc Rivers, Bernie Bickerstaff, Mo Cheeks, and, of course, Bill Russell, the man who started it all when he took over the Celtics in 1966.
It also includes such names as Gene Littles, Darrell Walker, Sidney Lowe, Butch Carter, Leonard Hamilton, and Randy Ayers. In other words, men whose names aren't quite so recognizable to the casual NBA fan.
And that's without mentioning the previous interim coaches. I've counted 12 of them, ranging in fame from Magic Johnson to Draff Young.
Black coaches are such a matter-of-fact way of life in the NBA that the Lakers and Heat are the only teams that have not yet hired one, although each has had a black interim mentor. Black coaches are so entrenched in the NBA that this spring we will celebrate the 34th anniversary of the first all-black coaching matchup in the NBA Finals (Golden State's Attles vs. Washington's Jones).
