The NBA has changed in a lot of ways. Over the years, the state of the game, and the league itself, have greatly evolved.
The recent hire of Darvin Ham marked yet another big milestone for the NBA. Now, officially, half of the teams in the league have a black head coach on the sidelines:
https://twitter.com/DiverseRep/status/1530644591585665029
As the latest hire, Darvin Ham joins guys like Doc Rivers, Tyronn Lue, Stephen Silas, Monty Williams, and Ime Udoka (among others) as part of the black coaching circle.
To some, the number of black coaches isn’t a huge deal at all. Still, black representation in the coaching world has been a controversial topic for years. Last year, Stephen A. Smith led the charge for black coaches by calling out players for not speaking up to promote more diversity.
“NBA players are some of the most powerful people in this world, when have they spoken up for black coaches?” Smith asked before later walking off the set. “When?! When have they spoken up for black coaches and black executives, GMs, president of basketball operations? When has that happened? LeBron, all of them, everybody! Where the hell have they been? Nobody has done anything.”
“Steve Nash never coached on any level. And not only does he get the job, but he gets the job with the full support of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, who, by the way, never insisted that a black candidate be interviewed.”
“We’re supposed to be woke. We’re supposed to understand that that knee on George Floyd’s neck wasn’t just about violence and police brutality. It was also the figurative semblance that it provided, where you’re feeling like constantly, people have their knee on your neck since the time you’ve come out of the womb,” Smith said. “From a figurative perspective, what we witnessed and what got the nation up and just inspired was because what we saw was symptomatic and emblematic of how we feel as a people — consistently being marginalized, consistently being minimized, consistently being under-appreciated, undervalued.”
It’s fair to say that the NBA has come a long way, and it makes a lot of sense. Over the past few years, the NBA has grown increasingly bold in standing up for social justice and being a voice for the oppressed.
During the George Floyd protests and COVID-19 crisis, the NBA was among the first and loudest sports groups to take a stance. And now, they are also leading the way in terms of internal diversity and representation.
