(ThyBlackMan.com) The New York Knicks have had a highly unusual 2017 NBA offseason. This summer, former NBA coaching legend Phil Jackson was released as Knicks team president after a volatile, unsuccessful three years in which he publicly criticized longtime All-Star Carmelo Anthony on multiple occasions and considered trading a potential young future All-Star in Kristaps Porzingis after Porzingis missed a team meeting.
The ongoing drama about Carmelo Anthony’s future with the team and Porzingis’ discontent with the team became secondary with the recent signing of former Atlanta Hawks guard Tim Hardaway, Jr. to a widely criticized contract. Most recently, the Knicks have found a general manager in former Sacramento Kings executive vice president of basketball operations Scott Perry. The hiring of Perry and naming of Steve Mills as the new Knicks team president surprisingly makes the New York Knicks the only NBA team with two Black men with those two major front office positions.
The NBA annually gets quality grades from the Racial and Gender Report Card that is given out by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. The Racial and Gender Report Card is an assessment of hiring practices in coaching and sport management in professional and college sport. The 2017 Racial and Gender Report Card for the National Basketball Association was highly rated. The NBA received an A for racial hiring practices with a score 94 points and a B for gender hiring practices with 82.9 points. The overall grade was an A-.
The NBA led all other men’s professional sports with its grades in hiring practices. When the 2016-17 NBA season ended there were five black men in either general manager or president of basketball operations positions on NBA teams. Los Angeles Lakers’ Magic Johnson, the Toronto Raptors’ Masai Ujiri, Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers, New Orleans Pelicans’ Dell Demps, and the Knicks’ Steve Mills were the important black NBA front office personnel men in the league before the additional hiring of Scott Perry to the Knicks. It is also worth noting that Charlotte Hornets’ Rich Cho, an Asian-American, is another minority NBA general manager.
New York Knicks owner James Dolan has been criticized and ridiculed frequently for his repeated bad decisions in how he has run the Knicks. He has made plenty of bad decisions but he has shown that he will hire black men to manage and coach his organization. All-time great NBA player Isiah Thomas got years of opportunities as both the New York Knicks team president and head coach before being fired. Former Knicks head coach Mike Woodson has been part of the only small amount of success the Knicks have had over the past decade.
Dolan’s interactions regarding black men have not been always positive but it isn’t completely surprising that the Knicks have the NBA’s only African-American president and general manager combination. The NBA does well in terms of hiring minorities but there needs to be improvement because right now there is less than 10 black men who are making the key personnel decisions for NBA teams in a 30 team sports league that remains a prominently black sports league.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines