(ThyBlackMan.com) The 2021-22 NBA season is here and all teams will be aiming for the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks, who won the franchise’s first NBA title since 1971. This season, 13 NBA head coaches of the 30 NBA head coaches are Black men, which is just one below the highest total in NBA history to the start an NBA regular season. Nearly a decade ago, at the start of the 2012-13 NBA season, 14 of the NBA’s 30 head coaches were Black. However, in recent years, the hiring of Black men to lead NBA teams from the sidelines has been in the single digits multiple seasons. For a professional sports league that is predominantly Black in terms of its on-court talent, the number of Black head coaches in the NBA has been unacceptable. However, it was noticeable that many of the teams that had the most success in the NBA Playoffs last season were led by Black male head coaches.
Only five out of the 16 head coaches whose teams made the 2021 NBA Playoffs were non-White. It is important to mention the Filipino background of longtime Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra making the 2021 NBA Playoffs with the four Black head coaches including the Atlanta Hawks’ Nate McMillan, Philadelphia 76ers’ Doc Rivers, Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue, and the Phoenix Suns’ Monty Williams. All four of the Black head coaches won at least one playoff series including the Atlanta Hawks and Nate McMillan, then an interim head coach, defeating the higher ranked New York Knicks, who were coached by the season’s Coach of the Year award winner Tom Thibodeau, who is white.
In the later rounds of the 2021 NBA Playoffs, the final four teams left standing in the 2021 NBA Playoffs in the Eastern Conference Finals and Western Conference Finals had three Black head coaches leading them, which is an amazing feat. In a 30 team NBA, three of the final four NBA head coaches competing for the NBA Finals were Black men, which cannot be understated. While a Black head coach did not win the NBA title when Phoenix’s Monty Williams lost to Milwaukee’s Mike Budenholzer, Williams was given a ton of credit for the coaching job he did along with the acquisition of Chris Paul by Black general manager James Jones for the ascension of a Suns team with considerable youth.
One of the top storylines of the 2021 NBA Playoffs was the play of the fresh-faced Atlanta Hawks, who lacked significant NBA Playoff experience entering last season’s playoffs with many of their core players like Trae Young and John Collins having never played in the postseason. Their head coach, Nate McMillan did a terrific job as the interim head coach after the team’s original head coach, Lloyd Pierce, was fired and it was no surprise that McMillan received a contract to be the full-time head coach after the playoffs concluded. One of the eye-popping developments of the entire NBA offseason is that six of the seven NBA head coaching openings following the 2020-21 season were filled by Black men, not counting Atlanta removing the interim tag from McMillan.
The hires were interesting for many reasons including Jason Kidd getting his third opportunity as a head coach, Ime Udoka coaching in a city with a checkered racial history, and the beautiful link between father and son organizationally for Wes Unseld Jr. being hired as Wizards head coach. There was some controversy around the hiring of Kidd to the Dallas Mavericks and Chauncey Billups to the Portland Trail Blazers due to their past yet they remained in their positions in perhaps another questionable sign that Black male head coaches are getting some treatment like their white peers. Including the aforementioned Erik Spoelstra and Charlotte Hornets’ James Borrego, who is of Mexican descent, and 15 of the 30 NBA head coaches, 50 percent, are not of European lineage and that is rare in any sports league.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
