Racism in Hiring/Firing NBA Coaches?Here's an
interesting article in the NY Times:
Over the last decade, black N.B.A. coaches have lasted an average of just 1.6 seasons, compared with 2.4 seasons for white coaches, according to a review of coaching records by The New York Times. That means the typical white coach lasts almost 50 percent longer and has most of an extra season to prove himself.The pattern holds in almost any important category of coaches. Winning black coaches have been replaced sooner than winning white coaches on average, and experienced black coaches have served shorter tenures than experienced white coaches. The same is true among losing coaches, among rookie coaches and among coaches who played in the N.B.A. and those who did not.I have looked in the past at the records of black NFL coaches, and concluded that there appeared to be some racial bias in hiring. Most black NFL coaches have a winning record and as a group they are well above .500, which certainly indicates to me that there is a possibility that NFL owners have not been making a sufficient effort to locate all the qualified black head coaches out there. It is also possible (because of the small number of black NFL coaches) that this is just a fluke, or that black coaches may have tended to be hired in situations where their success was likely (e.g., Tony Dungy in Indianapolis). However, the number of black NBA coaches is much higher and the NY Times study appears to have looked at different factors that could account for the differences.
I am generally suspicious of claims of racism (which is, after all, sometimes hard to differentiate from simple incompetence), but in this case it certainly seems possible that is what is happening.
