The National Basketball Association (NBA) has always been acknowledged for its diversity among players, staff, coaches, and executives. The basketball league has another feather to place in that cap as the NBA has earned an A in the 2023 NBA Racial and Gender Report Card recently released by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida.
According to The Associated Press, based on the released report card, the NBA also set a record for having the most head coaches of color in 2022. In November 2022, the league had 17 head coaches of color and 16 Black head coaches out of 30 teams, equating to more than half of the league having teams led by a Black head coach.
Richard Lapchick, the director for TIDES, said the number of Black head coaches leads to more diversity among the various positions in the NBA.
“When a league takes the initiative to set the kind of example that the NBA does, that’s not only good for the sport but good for society as well,” he said.
The report relied on data from the 2022-23 season. The league had high scores, receiving an A+ for racial hiring practices and a B+ for gender hiring practices. The NBA’s diversity initiatives also received an A+.
The NBA reached its highest percentage of women in professional staff roles in over a decade, with 43.3%. There was also a 30% rise in both racial and gender hiring for team senior administration as well as racial hiring for team professional staff.
But it wasn’t all excellent grades.
The report said the NBA still needs more diversity at the league’s highest levels. For just having 10% of team owners being women, it earned an F grade. It also received a D+ grade for having 13.3% of team owners being people of color (That number is slightly lower now that Michael Jordan just sold the Charlotte Hornets).
The NBA also received F grades for racial and gender diversity at the president/CEO level.