Just when we thought the NBA was a bastion of racial bias, the league has once again received a glowing report card from someone who actually knows a little something about diversity in the workplace.
Richard Lapchick, author of the “Race and Gender Report Card” for the various American sports leagues, has been studying hiring practices for minorities and women in sports for the better part of two decades.
When I first started out as a sports writer in the mid-1990s, Lapchick was at Northeastern University in Boston.
Now, he heads up the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
His latest report on diversity in the NBA came out today. Contrary to what you might have read in the last week or so, the league once again was heralded as “the industry leader on issues related to race and gender hiring practices,” Lapchick wrote in the report.
The NBA earned its highest grade ever for minority hiring – A-plus. It received a B for gender hiring and a combined grade of A-minus, the highest ever given to a sports league in the 15 years of the study.
Lapchick, son of the late Knicks and St. John’s coach Joe Lapchick, knows what he’s doing. Sports leagues have been steadily increasing opportunities for minorities and women as a direct response to his research.
So like me, Lapchick was floored last week when The New York Times made a front-page story out of an academic study stating that white NBA referees call fouls at a greater rate against black players than against whites, and vice versa.
“If that’s true, that’s not by design,” Lapchick told me this afternoon in a phone interview. “It’s certainly not by design of the league, which has bent over backwards to create a racial climate that is second to none.”
The Wolfers-Price study has been widely ridiculed by NBA players and league officials, including Commissioner David Stern, who called it “a bum rap” – and rightly so.
Lapchick’s report on the NBA cited numerous incontrovertible facts, some of which will he addressed in tomorrow’s newspaper (well, at least in this one). For example, the NBA has the highest percentage of black coaches, general managers, and vice presidents; the highest percentage of league office employees of color; and the only black majority team owner in men’s pro sports (Robert Johnson of the Bobcats).
It also has the only six black CEO/presidents in the history of men’s pro sports, according to Lapchick. Among those are two black presidents of basketball operations – Isiah Thomas of the Knicks and his former backcourt mate, Joe Dumars of the Pistons.
Oh, by the way: 64 percent of NBA referees are white, 32 percent are black, and 3 percent are Latino. Lapchick doesn’t assign grades for game officials, but if he did, he said the NBA would get an A for that, too.
“They have the highest percentage of referees of color anywhere,” Lapchick said.
And regardless of color, they all miss a call now and then.
UPDATE: You can read Lapchick's NBA study at www.ncasports.org/images/2006_NBA_RGRC_PR.pdf.
and draw your own conclusions.