How many black coaches in college basketball

More Black head coaches doesn’t mean college basketball’s problem is solved — Andscape

Excuse me for not handing out high-fives over the increase in Black college basketball head coaches this season. Pardon my lack of excitement over more opportunities arising from the murder of George Floyd. Let’s wait and see whether real equal opportunity has arrived.

As the season begins Tuesday, 34 of the 61 newly hired men’s Division I head coaches are Black. After taking replacements and firings into account, that means a net gain of 14 Black coaches. There are now 110 Black head coaches, up from 95 last season.

Wait, hold your applause — there are 358 coaches in men’s Division I basketball. Only 31% are Black, up from 27% last season. Meanwhile, more than half of the players are Black. And the higher you go in college basketball, in terms of quality and prestige of programs, the coaches get whiter and the rosters get Blacker.

Sure, the increase is a good sign, but it feels like the bank crediting money to your account out of nowhere — it could just disappear. Yes, it was encouraging to see Black excellence rewarded, from Ben Johnson at Minnesota to Isaac Brown at Wichita State, from Toyelle Wilson at SMU to the youngest Division I head coach in the country, 30-year-old Drew Valentine at Loyola Chicago. But anybody who knows the difference between a timeout and a turnover understands this hiring spree was a reaction to the massive racial justice protests that followed Floyd’s death under the knee of a white cop.

To make sure my skepticism wasn’t misplaced, I interviewed 14 Black head and assistant coaches. I wanted to know if it was wrong to think that when chocolate is no longer the flavor of the month, the head-coaching ranks could easily return to vanilla.

It defies common sense that so many Black players have produced so few head coaches. But there’s an ugly logic in the fact that an overwhelmingly white power structure — athletic directors, presidents, trustees, regents and the almighty donors — has mostly chosen white men to run their teams.

They were basically like, does a Baylor Bear dunk on the hardwood?

“I think this is just a one-time thing,” said an assistant who coached in the Power 5 last season. Like most people interviewed for this story, he spoke on condition that his name not be used, because he knows one Google search could cost him his dream job.

“I talk to current college assistants all the time and we say, ‘Hey, you do understand this may be as high as you can go?’ ” he said. “That’s a conversation amongst us — ‘I may not be able to go any higher than this.’ And you have to live with that.”

“We have to do it cleaner, and we have to do it better, and we can’t have blemishes,” said Kevin Sutton, an assistant at Florida Gulf Coast. “And clearly, we have to win. At some schools you have to win big. We have to be more professional, smarter and more consistent. We have to be twice as good.”

The reasons Black coaches have a tougher road to the top are at once mysterious and painfully obvious. It defies common sense that so many Black players have produced so few head coaches. But there’s an ugly logic in the fact that an overwhelmingly white power structure — athletic directors, presidents, trustees, regents and the almighty donors — has mostly chosen white men to run their teams. The next layer of the problem is the stereotype of Black coaches as recruiters and “relate to”-ers, instead of strategists and leaders — which is another way of saying that Black coaches aren’t as intelligent as white ones. There’s also the rapid 10- to 14-day time frame of most hires, which are run by search firms and tend to favor coaches within established white networks. Then comes the importance of coming up under the right head coach, who is historically more likely to be a white man.

Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

This is not an indictment of white head coaches in general — well, maybe some of them. Because it’s undeniable that some white coaches with mediocre records or questionable pasts continue to receive head-coaching jobs — or keep them after being accused of serious violations — while many Black coaches with spotless resumes remain stuck as assistants. Once in the top spot, plenty of white coaches with unspectacular results still get contract extensions — something that rarely happens with Black coaches.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. In other words, to be truly free, we must have the freedom not to be successful, too,” Georgetown head coach John Thompson said in his autobiography, I Came as a Shadow, which I wrote with him.

In 1984, Thompson became the first Black coach to win an NCAA basketball championship. (He resisted that label, because he said it falsely implied he was the first Black coach with the ability to win a title.) Since then, out of 72 men’s and women’s titles, only five have been won by Black coaches.

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley was the most recent to do so, in 2017. She just signed a new contract extension worth more than $3 million per year. But women’s basketball did not see a jump in Black coaches this season — only 13 of 41 head coaches hired were Black. Only 25% of women’s coaches were Black in 2019-20, the most recent year for which NCAA demographic stats are available. Forty-six percent of players that season were Black; 31% were white.

Given all the history, can this year’s equal opportunity be sustained?

“That’s a great question, and I would love to tell you I knew the answer,” said Craig Robinson, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. “I’m hopeful. And you’re right, it was the result of the racial reckoning of that we saw all of last year — but that’s OK.”

“We have to continue to advocate for equal opportunity beyond coaches,” Robinson said. “We need to see diversity at the athletic director level, at the provost level, at the president level, more people of color on boards of trustees and boards of regents, because that will have a positive trickle-down impact.”

Everyone I spoke with said the real test of this season’s progress will be what the numbers look like in three or four years, when this batch of contracts are nearing an end, wins and losses are being counted, and a new round of firings and hirings will commence.

Brian Peterson/Star Tribune via Getty Images

“You can do a great job and be in a tough position, and it just might take you a year or two to flip it, if you’re doing it the right way,” said Johnson, the new Minnesota coach. “I think people just need to recognize that and recognize when you see somebody that’s talented that can get it done, to give them that space and that opportunity to get it done. Sometimes you got to struggle to be great. I think history has shown, more times than not, the jobs that we do get are a little bit harder. We all don’t get handed that silver spoon, where it’s just like the table is set.”

The only new Black coach with a silver spoon this year is Hubert Davis at North Carolina, which is ranked in the preseason top 25. Davis played at Carolina, then the NBA, then assisted at his alma mater under the legend Roy Williams. Mike Woodson has a good chance to succeed at Indiana, where he played before going to the NBA as a player and head coach.

But most Black coaches are usually handed plastic forks for jobs that are uphill battles (Earl Grant at Boston College, Kyle Neptune at Fordham), long shots (Levell Sanders at Binghamton) or mission impossible (Tony Madlock at South Carolina State).

On the record, the coaches I interviewed expressed optimism while acknowledging that the playing field is not yet level. “I think once we knock down some of these stigmas of just being a recruiter, or that ‘he’s a player’s coach,’ you might hear some different things, like ‘he’s an in-game adjuster,’ ” said Shantay Legans, the new head coach at Portland. He got the job after leading Eastern Washington to the NCAA tournament last season, where it gave Kansas a scare in the first round. “Once we start getting those labels, then I think we’ll start getting looked at differently.”

Without their names attached, the comments were blistering.

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“Well, being Black, you kind of don’t want to get your hopes up,” said an assistant for a mid-major women’s team. “George Floyd was being talked about so much and creating so much protest, it’s like, are they hiring Black coaches to shut everyone up.”

“The coaches that don’t succeed, schools might be like, ‘You got your shot, your one opportunity — now it’s time to go back to what we’re used to,’ ” she said. “Does a white man really go into a $500,000 coaching job with as much pressure as a Black female or Black man going into that position? I don’t think so. The pressure on us to succeed is significantly higher.”

Said a Power 5 assistant who works for a Black head coach: “I’ve had boosters come up and tell me, ‘Frankly, I have not been around Black people.’ They say about my boss, ‘I’ve never met someone like him.’ They gave him an opportunity and have gotten to know him, and they’re blown away at his substance, his core. But a lot of whites that give money haven’t been around Blacks. In those scenarios, if there’s not success and those relationships aren’t cultivated, then a lot of whites unfortunately go back to the status quo of being around people that they’re comfortable with that look like them. ”

The uprisings of 2020 penetrated deep into college sports. Players protested on campus, knelt during the national anthem, even discussed delaying an NCAA tournament game. Many white coaches seemed out of their comfort zone. It’s not a stretch to see the hiring of so many Black coaches, in part, as the power structure trying to maintain control of its billion-dollar industry.

“This was a door opening because of George Floyd,” said one veteran assistant coach. “They bring everybody Black in and want everybody to feel good. They thought this was an opportunity to control the players. They hired these guys because they know where the money lies — in the players.”

American history is full of backlash to racial progress. After Reconstruction, Jim Crow. After Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight boxing champ, he was railroaded into prison. As the civil rights movement marched forward, the Confederate flag reemerged. After Fritz Pollard broke the NFL’s color line, Black players were kept out for another 12 years. After Obama, Trump.

As this college basketball season begins, equality is scoring some points — but injustice can still get back in the game.

Jesse Washington is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. He still gets buckets.

Only 13 Black Coaches Led Major Men’s Basketball Programs This Year. Two Face Off In The Sweet 16.

Florida State and Michigan are two of the most dependable names in men’s college basketball these days. Though both are traditional football powerhouses, each has seen far more recent success on the hardwood. Florida State is coming off of consecutive top-two conference finishes and has reached the second weekend of the Big Dance in three of the past four tournaments, while Michigan has made two national title games in the past decade and 10 of the past 13 tournaments overall. The two teams even met in the NCAA Tournament’s regional final in 2018, with the Wolverines prevailing, 58-54, en route to the second of those title games. 

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The two programs also are led by Black coaches, which is more the exception than the rule: Leonard Hamilton of Florida State, in his 19th year in Tallahassee, and Michigan’s Juwan Howard, in his second year in Ann Arbor three decades after his playing career there. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, 22.7 percent of the coaches in men’s Division I basketball in the 2019-20 season were Black, while 53.2 percent of the players were. Out of the 77 coaches to have led a team this season at the Power Six level,¹ just 13 are Black. 

In a 2018 interview with William C. Rhoden of The Undefeated, Hamilton expressed disappointment and bewilderment in the continued underrepresentation of Black coaches in college basketball. “It has been extremely confusing at times, discouraging at times, to come up with the right answer,” Hamilton said. “It’s a mystery to me why progress has been so slow. It’s a mystery why the doors have not been opened wider.”

None of the blue bloods of college basketball — Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina or Duke — is led by a Black coach, and just one (Kentucky under Tubby Smith) has ever employed a Black coach. Out of the 25 winningest programs in Division I history, just two (St. John’s and Temple) are currently led by Black coaches. The entire Pac-12 has zero Black head basketball coaches.

Hamilton and Howard are among few Black coaches

Black head coaches in Power Six men’s basketball during the 2020-21 season by career wins, and their first year as a head coach

Coach	School	Conference	1st year	Record
Leonard Hamilton	Florida State	ACC	1986	600-437
Mike Anderson	St. John’s (N.Y.)	Big East	2002	402-226
Ed Cooley	Providence	Big East	2006	286-204
Shaka Smart*	Texas	Big 12	2009	272-142
Cuonzo Martin	Missouri	SEC	2008	252-177
Jeff Capel	Pitt	ACC	2002	215-158
Dave Leitao**	DePaul	Big East	1994	212-241
Kevin Keatts	NC State	ACC	2014	151-74
LaVall Jordan	Butler	Big East	2016	80-79
Mike Boynton Jr.	Oklahoma State	Big 12	2017	72-58
Patrick Ewing	Georgetown	Big East	2017	62-59
Juwan Howard	Michigan	Big Ten	2019	41-16
Jerry Stackhouse	Vanderbilt	SEC	2019	20-37

Prominent figures within the sport have long decried the relative paucity of Black coaches representing, mentoring and leading Division I basketball players, the majority of whom are Black. Some, like Kentucky’s John Calipari, have blamed a truncated coaching pipeline, arguing the NCAA’s elimination of graduate assistant coaching spots in the early 1990s made it more difficult for Black coaches to ascend the ranks. Others, like Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, point to a lack of representation among athletic directors; according to The Undefeated, just 12 athletic directors at Power Five conferences at the start of 2018 were Black.  

“People hire people that look like them,” Ewing said in 2020. “It’s not necessarily racist. Most of the time you hire a person you can relate to.”

When those obstacles are overcome, the presence and success of Black coaches at high-major programs likely paves the way for more Black coaches in Division I basketball. As we discussed in our piece on his legacy, the late John Thompson Jr.’s success at Georgetown opened the doors for more Black coaches in the ranks of college basketball. Near the start of Thompson’s tenure, there were just seven Black head coaches at the Division I level who coached outside of historically Black colleges or universities. By the early 1990s, after the Thompson-led Hoyas had reached three Final Fours, winning one championship, that number had grown nearly fivefold, to 34. Among the 10 winningest Black coaches in Division I history, eight started their careers a decade after Thompson started at Georgetown.

One of those new coaches was Hamilton, whose path to Florida State and 600 wins — recently surpassing “Big John” — was anything but guaranteed. He almost left basketball in 1974 after the president of Austin Peay, where Hamilton was an assistant coach, told Hamilton that he would not be considered for the head coaching position because he was Black. Hamilton quit his job and worked briefly as a salesman before the former coach at Austin Peay arranged an interview for him at Kentucky, which had integrated only five years earlier. Hamilton spent 12 seasons as an assistant for the Wildcats before starting his head coaching career in 1986 at Oklahoma State. He then coached 10 seasons at the University of Miami and one season for the NBA’s Washington Wizards before landing at Florida State in 2002. 

Howard’s journey back to Michigan, in contrast, was far less circuitous. After completing a 19-year NBA career in which he played for eight teams (including Hamilton’s Wizards), the former All-Star stayed on as a member of the Miami Heat, transitioning from player to assistant coach. When his alma mater came knocking after John Beilein left to coach the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, the former Fab 5 star couldn’t say no. Still, Howard’s hiring generated criticism from a number of observers, some of whom pointed to his lack of experience as a head coach as a liability for the program.

But the records of the two coaches speak for themselves. Hamilton has risen to the top of a conference with three Hall of Famers in Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim, and himself is on the ballot for the Hall’s 2021 class. Howard is just starting a career in arguably the nation’s most competitive conference and is one of just four coaches to earn a No. 1 seed in his first NCAA Tournament appearance. 

At a time where the conversation around progressive hiring in sports has perhaps never been louder, the true test of schools’ commitments to hiring Black coaches will lie in soon-to-be vacancies at elite programs. Krzyzewski, Williams and Boeheim are all in their 70s, and it’s conceivable that each coach’s successor could come from his ranks of assistant coaches. Two of the three associate or assistant head coaches on each of the staffs at Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse are Black, suggesting that the next in line at each of these powerhouses could look different than each program’s historical coaching lineage. 

But if recent coaching searches at other historically elite programs are any indication, there may be reason to be skeptical of such change. Each of these elite schools will no doubt feel pressure to score a big name with a proven track record — someone who, just by the opportunities already afforded them, is more likely to be white than Black. It may be hard to envision that any one of them would skirt outside the safe, well-traveled path of hiring “qualified,” white basketball coaches. Two Black coaches leading their highly ranked squads in the Sweet 16 may do little to change that. 

“As a Black skin, some folks think that you’re not qualified enough,” Howard told the Michigan Daily in October. “I think that’s the ignorance that we have to ignore and continue to keep driving and doing whatever to be the best person of ourselves, no matter what people may say or think.”

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But it wasn't always like that. Just a few decades ago, in some 60s, it was simply impossible to hear such an answer. And the people were different - everything was saturated with notes of racism and ridicule, and basketball, in fact, was not the same. It was a game for whites.

No one could believe that the future of basketball belongs to black players. Instead, all the coaches were saying the same thing: "They can't play, they can't think" . In the sports world, there was even an unspoken rule - in the game on the site there may be one “Negro” when you play at home, two “blacks” when you are visiting, and three - when you lose.

But in 1965, the still unknown coach Don Haskins, having put his reputation and career on the line, for a small salary, became the coach of the outsider basketball team Texas Western Miners and, breaking an unwritten taboo, immediately recruited 7 black players. Everyone did not like this - both racist fans, and sports experts turning their noses, and even the owner of the team himself. But the coach of the Texas Western Miners believed in the capabilities of these guys and did everything in his power to make them a close-knit brotherly team.

Several weeks of stubborn, exhausting training sessions, the tough requirements of the coach, and without that good street training made one of the best teams of the Championship out of the guys. As Don Haskins himself said: "I started with the best!".

With the beginning of the competition, it became clear that the time was not wasted, and the Miners team began to smash the rivals one by one. All the coaches were perplexed, even in the fourth and final quarter of the game, the players always remained as cheerful and strong as in the first. With their victories, they forced sports experts to moderate their angry ardor a little and reduce ridicule against the team.

And yet, with each victory, the racist attacks became more and more pronounced. Harsh letters came to Haskins' house, the team was bombarded with food, and when the players went to the game, the players' hotel rooms were theft. There was even a moment when, tired of the burden hanging over them, the team almost gave up. But the players, with the help of their coach, of course, showed fortitude and, having withstood all these attacks, reached the final of the US Championship, becoming the main sports sensation of the season.

Don Haskins' team would face the favorites, the undefeated Kentucky team, for the Cup. But oddly enough, for the most serious game against the white guys, Haskins put up an African-American five. It can be seen that he then really wanted to prove to everyone what five blacks on the playground are worth. And it really was the right time.

Until this season, all coaches and specialists believed that the easier the team conducts game combinations, the higher the team's class, but the guys from the Texas Western Miners showed the team's real class with numerous tricks, throws and tricks, and they won their victory.

At first, this victory did not seem so obvious. And the negative attitude towards the Haskins team only increased by the next season, but three years later the first team was formed, consisting entirely of black players. Now the path to sports was open for them. As for the merits of Haskins, it is difficult to even overestimate them, because, in the end, he assembled a team of winners and led it to the coveted champion's Cup.

Willie Worsley, Bobby Joe Hill, David Luttin, Willie Kager, Nevil Shed, Orsten Artis and Harry Flournoy are the first black winners. They fought an epic battle that shattered racist prejudice in the sport and forever changed the history of basketball, which became a simple game open to any player who could get on the court and show his best.

Tags: America, African Americans, sport, racism, basketball

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All about basketball

Blog March 22, 2019 Views: 1166

Today we want to talk about people whose importance in basketball is very great.

After all, the team is not only the players, it is also the Coach, whose task is to help these players to reach their potential.
The coach is the organizer of the team's activities; he must be well versed both in the game itself and in the psychology of working with wards. Since the methods of working with one player may not always be effective with another, and the methods of working with one team are always different from the methods of working with another. The best coach is not the one who blindly imitates eminent mentors, but the one who works, taking into account the characteristics of his team, such as the age of the players, their skills, common goals and relationships.
We present to your attention the 5 greatest coaches.

1. Phil Jackson

(11 NBA titles, 13 NBA Finals, 1 Coach of the Year 1996). One of the greatest coaches in NBA history. He worked with the best players: Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone. In the 1990s, Jackson led the Chicago Bulls to 6 championships and the 2000s Los Angeles Lakers to 5 trophies. In 2014, Jackson became president of the New York Knicks, serving in that capacity until 2017. Jackson is an excellent tactician and strategist, skillfully using the strengths of his charges. In 2007, Phil Jackson was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame.

Phil Jackson: “My approach is to treat each basketball player as an individual, not as a cog in the system. The player must understand for himself what special he is able to bring to the game, with the exception of points and assists. Does he have enough courage? Sustainability? How does he behave in a stressful situation? Many of the people I've worked with didn't stand out on paper, but in the process of working on their role, they grew into formidable champions."

2. Red Auerbach

(9 NBA titles, 11 NBA Finals, 1 Coach of the Year 1965). Long-term mentor of the Boston Celtics club (1950-1966). Auerbach is a pioneer of modern basketball, he rethought basketball, brought team dominance and tough defense into the game, and not isolated feats and high performance, introduced a fast break. He raised many players who are inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. In addition, Auerbach was instrumental in breaking down the barriers of color discrimination in the NBA. He made history as the first coach to invite an African-American (Chuck Cooper) to the NBA at 19.50, and the first to field an all-black starting five in 1964. After his resignation as head coach, Red Auerbach spent several years as the team's general manager and then president of the Boston Celtics.

Red Auerbach: “The most important thing in coaching is communication. And the main thing here is not only what you say, but what people absorb.

3. Gregg Popovich

(5 NBA titles, 6 NBA Finals, 3 Coach of the Year awards (2003, 2012, 2014)). Since 1996, he has been the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs. At the beginning of 2019, Popovich is the longest-serving coach not only in the NBA, but in all four major sports leagues in North America. He managed to create and maintain for many years a wonderful atmosphere in the team - the concepts of "scandal" and "Spurs" are mutually exclusive.

Gregg Popovich: “The most important thing in our system is stability. An absolute focus on stability with an emphasis on defense. We don't discuss how many games we win, whether we win a division, whether we win a title, nothing like that. No goals. Our only goal is to get better every day, to train every day, to appreciate every match. If after every training session and every match we learn something new, that we did something well and something else bad, then this will be quite enough. Plus, trust is important. We can argue, swear and disagree with each other, but when we go out on the floor, we cheer for each other.”

4. John Wooden

(10 National Collegiate Championships with UCLA). Wooden is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach. He became the first member of the Hall of Fame, who was included in it in two categories at once. In all his years as a coach, John prohibited his players from using profanity. He was truly a legend of his time, a great role model, the greatest coach, philosopher and exceptional personality beyond the sports world.

John Wooden: "What personality you are is more important than what kind of basketball player you are."

5. Patrick James "Pat" Riley

(5 NBA titles, 9 NBA Finals, 3 Coach of the Year awards (1990, 1993, 1997)). Known as one of the most talented NBA coaches in its history. He is currently the president of the Miami Heat team. In 2008, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Pat Riley: "To have long-term success as a coach or in any leadership position, you have to be obsessed in some way.

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