Didn’t the Cleveland Cavaliers fire coach David Blatt because they were just going through the motions?
And this week was different … how?
Just eight days ago, the Cavs were flying as high as they’ve been under new Coach Tyronn Lue, having dispatched the Thunder in Oklahoma City without Iman Shumpert and Mo Williams, and with Kyrie Irving limited to 10 minutes because of, um, a bad reaction to bedbug bites suffered in his hotel room. They played downhill, made a bunch of 3-pointers and held OKC to 41 percent shooting. They were 40-15 and had won five in a row and led the Eastern Conference.
Then came this week, and more questions, more uncertainty, more examples of how the Cavs “lack mental,” as LeBron James put it in Toronto on Friday after Cleveland blew a nine-point fourth-quarter lead to the Raptors. The Cavs lost three times in four games, leaving themselves just two games up on the Raptors for first in the East.
For a team with championship aspirations, the Cavaliers still display some bad habits.
You can dismiss the Cavaliers’ blowout loss Sunday in Washington as an aberration, a schedule loss (the Wizards regularly thump opponents on weekend afternoon games when their visitors have spent much of the previous night, uh, getting to know some of the local denizens and establishments) or something to be expected when James was out on a rest/maintenance day.
You’d be wrong.
This is when teams that are serious about a long postseason run get serious. The Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs have not let up at all in their march after the All-Star break, despite injuries, or opponent, or schedule. They’re both locked in, as they’ve been all season. San Antonio used the “Rodeo Trip”, as always, to launch into hyper-speed for the stretch run. Golden State continues to stretch the boundaries of what’s considered possible in basketball’s geometry.
Cleveland is still good — real good. But greatness continues to be temporary.
“Pressure cooker,” veteran James Jones said in the Cavs’ locker room Sunday. “Pressure either makes diamonds, or dirt.”
If ever there was a time for Irving or Kevin Love to show they could carry the Cavs if James ever faltered or was out for an extended period, it was Sunday. Irving has dominated John Wall many times over the years. But on Sunday, Wall did the dominating, leading his team to a 30-point bulge in the third quarter, and sat out the last 12 minutes, and the under-.500 Wizards had an easy afternoon at Verizon Center. (Irving took part of the blame Sunday, saying he had to take accountability for how his team played.)
It was the latest addition to an ominous statistic: the Cavs are now 3-12 the last two seasons in games that James didn’t play. And Lue said there will be more scheduled rest days for James before the end of the regular season.
“If we don’t play as hard as we can, even with all the talent we have, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say we’re not as good as we think we are, but we’re not as good as we can and should be,” Love said. “You can see it out there. It’s obvious. And I think that energy and engagement on the defensive end, we’re 100 percent capable of. We just need it for 48 minutes.”
Cleveland wanted Joe Johnson for the stretch drive, but Johnson went to Miami. The Cavs traded for Channing Frye to help their second unit stretch the floor better. But Frye can’t help what’s ailing the Cavs.
The explanation when Blatt was fired in late January was that there was no accountability in the locker room, that players felt Blatt didn’t come at James for mistakes with the same gusto he did the other players on the team. With Lue in charge, everyone would be on the same page, and the Cavs would start playing with energy and purpose.
Cleveland is 11-6 under Lue, who wanted his team to get in better shape to play with the pace everyone agrees is the best way for the team to attack. Lue said Sunday that his players are improved in that category, but the team’s defensive problems have made it hard for his team to get out and run.
“I feel confident about what we have going on,” Lue said after the Wizards’ loss. “The Toronto game, Kyle Lowry had an unbelievable game to will them in. Other than that, I think we’ve been playing good basketball.”
That’s true … mostly.
The Cavs are fourth in the league in points allowed, but the trend is going the wrong way. They’re eighth in points allowed since Blatt was fired. They were fifth in defensive rating (99.7 points allowed per 100 possessions) under Blatt; they’re 14th (105) under Lue. It’s true that part of the reason why is they’re scoring more under Lue; they’re averaging 110.5 points per 100 possessions in 18 games under Lue (which ranks 7th), after averaging 105.6 under Blatt (5th).
But there are still underlying issues.
There is still, one member of the organization said, too much grumbling about roles and shots and not being able to find a rhythm when James is on the floor. All of that might be accurate, but these are the kinds of issues that championship teams endure and overcome. And on a team where all of the major players all have max or near-max deals, it’s harder to be sympathetic.
“Everybody got their money,” this member of the organization said Sunday. “I could see if guys were in their contract (years) and they got a little thirsty. But they got their money.”
Last year, the Cavaliers were running through the tape (sorry, Kenny). They were 34-9 from Jan. 15 through the end of the regular season, getting their necks up after being criticized for a 19-20 start. That’s been Cleveland’s MO the last two years; when the hits come from the outside, the team circles the wagons and gets ornery on the court. But it doesn’t last.
Everyone in Cleveland’s locker room knows the only thing that matters is the playoffs. And the Cavs look like a team that’s not going to snap to attention until the playoffs. That’s a trap. And they’re going to get nicked here and there in the won-loss record along the way. There is an ominous term thrown around: front-runners.
James has been harping about this all year, talking about lack of attention to detail and other mental mistakes the Cavs are making. They’re papered over when Cleveland is engaged and makes a stand as in the OKC game. But when they’re not connected, things unravel quickly. That inexplicably horrible end-of-game execution at home to Boston at the beginning of the month is but one example.
I asked J.R. Smith his level of concern after the game Sunday.
“High,” he said. “It should be extremely high. We can’t play basketball like this going down the stretch. It’s 24, 25 games left in the year, and you talk about contending to be a championship contender, and you get blown out by a team, I mean, in their building, early game, after losing to the number two team in the east, you come out and get thrashed … we can’t do that. If we’re serious about who we’re supposed to be, then we can’t do this.”
When Cleveland hits first, and is physical, it’s very hard to beat. The Cavs were the aggressors this month in wins over the Spurs and Chicago Bulls.
“We shouldn’t assume that just because we have time that we’ll get better with time,” Jones said. “Just like there’s an opportunity to get better, there’s an opportunity to get worse. It’s not one of those things where you can predict and say, okay, you give us X amount of time to push through. It’s a day by day. You hope to see incremental progress and hopefully one day it breaks loose and you see this huge transformation. But being realistic, it’s getting to that point of the season where we have to see that growth — not just incrementally, but in a lot of big ways.”
In the interim, they are working in Frye, acquired from Orlando in the three-way deal that sent longtime Cav (and fan favorite) Anderson Varejao to Portland (he was subsequently waived by the Trail Blazers, and signed by the Warriors for the rest of the season).
GM David Griffin knew Frye from their days together in Phoenix, and the Cavs’ system is familiar to him.
“It’s extremely similar in the sense of where they want me to be on the court,” Frye said. “It’s extremely similar in that I’m doing the screen and roll with the second guard, and not the first. I was more of a Goran Dragic guy (in Phoenix); you started to see that my last year when we really clicked. And I’m more of a Delly (Matthew Dellavedova) guy. Being with that second unit, I’m just trying to make sure that I’m getting to the right spots, making sure I know where they like to throw it, what kind of passes they can make.”
Frye also has a good eye for team chemistry, and he says the Cavaliers are a pretty loose bunch, considering the stakes.
“Every team has a thin line between what works and what doesn’t,” Frye said. “I’m trying to get to know everybody. LeBron and Kyrie and Kevin definitely set the tone early. The question is, can we continue to sustain that over the course of the game, so they don’t have to play 40 minutes. And that’s tough. They want to play 40 minutes.”
Lue will have some tough calls to make about minutes as the postseason approaches.
The Cavs’ best offensive quintet by far this season, per NBA.com/Stats, has Dellavedova at the point, with Smith at the two, James at the three, Love at the four and Tristan Thompson at center. That group has an offensive rating of 118.9. And their best defensive unit (a defensive rating of 89.5) also features Dellavedova at the point, with Iman Shumpert in at the two for Smith. And James has made no secret of his appreciation for Dellavedova the last couple of years.
It’s one of many things the Cavs have to figure out about themselves, and soon. This is when the really good teams begin to separate from the pack, while the pretenders just separate from each other.
“Yesterday was the time,” Love said. “Now is the time. We have vocal guys. LeBron makes us all better. He is our vocal leader. He leads by example. He shows it every single day. We need to fall in line, follow suit, bring what he brings to the table every day. I mean, it’s on us. It’s on our coaching staff, it’s on us, it’s on everybody. It’s not a one- or two-person thing. It’s all of us.”
TOP O’ THE WORLD, MA!
(previous rank in brackets; last week’s record in parenthesis)
1) Golden State [1] (4-0): Warriors have already clinched a playoff berth. Today is February 29.
2) San Antonio [3] (3-0): Adding 83-year-old Andre Miller to the crew is so Spurs I can’t stand it.
3) Toronto [4] (3-1): Kyle Lowry, post All-Star break: 26.2 points per game, 8.2 assists, .551 shooting percentage, 145 Offensive Rating.
4) Cleveland [2] (1-3): Anderson Varejao, classy to the end.
5) Oklahoma City [5] (1-2): Serge Ibaka’s monster night Saturday (15 points, 20 rebounds) against the Warriors’ frontcourt shouldn’t be overlooked. That’s the kind of production OKC will need from him in the playoffs should these teams meet again.
6) L.A. Clippers [6] (2-1): Austin Rivers says he’ll be back Wednesday after missing 10 games with a broken hand.
7) Memphis [7] (2-1): Grizz averaging 108.1 points per game without Marc Gasol since losing him for the season with a broken foot, but it’s a little misleading: they’ve mainly played a bottom-feeder schedule (two games with the Lakers, and single games with Phoenix, Minnesota and Brooklyn).
8) Boston [8] (2-1): Brad Stevens wins his 100th game as Celtics coach in Saturday’s victory over Miami.
9) Dallas [9] (2-1): Mavs 3-1 so far on longest homestand (six games) of the season.
10) Miami [10] (2-2): Joe Johnson not a vanity play for the Heat; they’ll need his scoring, immediately.
11) Atlanta [12] (2-1): This is so much more important than any W the Hawks notch this season.
12) Indiana [11] (1-3): Rough patch coming up for the Pacers: six of their next seven on the road — Cleveland, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Washington, Dallas, Atlanta — with the lone home game against the Spurs.
13) Portland [15] (3-1): Back-to-back road wins for Blazers (Chicago and Indiana) a great start to a brutal stretch: 12 of 15 games on the road through the last week of March, including an East Coast swing this week and a Texas/OKC trip later in the month.
14) Charlotte [13] (1-2): Someone asked me if I thought Kemba Walker was the most underrated player in the league. Might be.
15) Chicago [14] (1-2): I see McBuckets starting to ball out for the Bulls, and I keep seeing the Kings announcing they’ll take Nik Stauskas with the eighth pick in the ’14 Draft when they already have Ben McLemore. I continue to weep silently for Kings Nation.
TEAM OF THE WEEK
Golden State (4-0): Seriously, you have to ask why?
TEAM OF THE WEAK
Philadelphia (0-4): To call the Sixers’ defense (117 points allowed in four games last week) a sieve is an insult to hard-working sieves around the world.
NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT…
Can anyone punch a hole in the glass ceiling for basketball executives of color?
Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov vowed to go to the ends of the earth to find his next general manager. He wound up going only about 1,826 miles.
Prokhorov, like so many other NBA owners, decided to fill his position with a member of the Spurs’ organization. He hired Sean Marks, San Antonio’s assistant general manager since 2014. Marks beat out other finalists that included former Suns and Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo and Nuggets assistant GM Arturas Karnisovas.
The Nets also had had preliminary discussions with another executive, Orlando Magic assistant GM Scott Perry, who is African-American. But Perry didn’t make the list of finalists.
That is a recurring theme for African-American executives around the league.
Marks replaced Billy King, who has been an executive for most of the last decade in Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and was one of the few African-American executives in the league. King was reassigned within the Nets’ organization, but is no longer in a decision-making capacity.
With King’s departure, only five NBA teams have men of color who run their basketball departments, or have final say over personnel: Toronto, where Nigerian-born Masai Ujiri is general manager; Charlotte, whose GM, Rich Cho, is Asian-American; Minnesota, where Milt Newton, born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, was named GM after the death of Flip Saunders last year; New Orleans, with GM Dell Demps, and the Clippers, where Doc Rivers got final say on personnel when hired as the Clippers’ coach in 2013.
(It is believed that Jason Kidd, the Bucks’ coach, who is biracial, has substantial say on personnel in Milwaukee, though it isn’t clear at present whether he has final say. A Yahoo! report last week said that Kidd was seeking more control in Milwaukee.)
No one disparages Marks, an amiable New Zealander who played for six NBA teams in a 12-year playing career. He re-joined one of those teams, San Antonio, in 2011, on the other side of the locker room as an assistant in the basketball operations department. He quickly moved up the chain — assistant coach in 2013-14 on the championship team, assistant general manager in 2014, including running the Spurs’ NBA D-League affiliate, the Austin Spurs. And no one with a brain would deny San Antonio’s incredible organizational success over the last 15 years.
The Spurs are the gold standard of sports organizations, from coach Gregg Popovich and GM R.C. Buford on down. They have been innovative, and ground-breaking, hiring Becky Hammon as a full-time assistant coach in 2014, and giving her the Spurs’ summer league team to coach in Vegas last year — of course, they won the championship. It makes sense to pick from that tree.
But Marks’ hiring was another strikeout for African-American executives, who have fallen far behind their white counterparts when it comes to getting opportunities to run NBA teams. (Here, “running a team” is simply defined as having final say over personnel, coaching and all aspects of a team’s basketball operations.)
“At the end of the day, they’re going to hire who they want to hire,” said one executive of color. “But in a game that’s 75 percent (African-American players), you’re going to tell me we can’t even get involved in the process of the hire? All these businessmen talk about having a wide search and a wide net. But how can it be a wide net when you don’t talk to any of us?”
Longtime executives like Perry, who was in Detroit as Joe Dumars’ assistant GM, helped build the team that won the 2004 NBA championship and made six straight Eastern Conference finals appearances. He was in Oklahoma City when the Thunder moved from Seattle, yet has rarely reached the finalist stage.
Neither have people like Walt Perrin, Utah’s director of player personnel since 2008, and a college scout for the Pistons and Timberwolves for 15 years before that. Or Allan Houston, the former sharpshooting guard who’s been the general manager of the Knicks’ D-League affiliate in Westchester, N.Y. since 2014. Or Gerald Madkins, the Clippers’ Director of Scouting, who had been L.A.’s Director of Basketball Operations, with previous stints in Houston as Director of Scouting, and in New Orleans as Vice President of Player Personnel.
There’s J.J. Polk, the Pelicans’ Director of Basketball Administration for the last five years. And Brandon Williams, now the 76ers’ Chief of Staff after running their D-League affiliate in Delaware the last few years. There’s Ed Tapscott, the Wizards’ Director of Player Development, and former Chief Operating Officer of the Charlotte Bobcats, as well as Director of Administration for the Knicks. And Frank Ross, Washington’s Director of Player Personnel, and a former scout for the Thunder and Grizzlies.
And there’s Troy Weaver, the Thunder’s assistant GM since the team moved to Oklahoma City. Weaver has been interviewed for more than a few jobs, and he had a very good opportunity to get at least one vacant GM job in the last couple of years, according to sources. But it didn’t work out at the time. But given Weaver’s resume, he shouldn’t have to jump at the first opportunity that rolls along. Oklahoma City has built a pretty strong organization to be respected, too.
There has already been a dropoff in the number of head coaches of color around the league, from a high of 15 in 2012 to the current 11. And that 11 is deceiving, as three of those coaches — J.B. Bickerstaff in Houston, Tony Brown in Brooklyn, and Earl Watson in Phoenix — are interim coaches not likely to be retained after the season. The more realistic number is eight: Rivers, Minnesota’s Sam Mitchell (promoted from associate head coach upon Saunders’ death), Cleveland’s Tyronn Lue, Toronto’s Dwane Casey, Miami’s Erik Spoelstra (a Filipino-American), Kidd, New Orleans’ Alvin Gentry and the Lakers’ Byron Scott.
And, according to the Racial Report Card issued by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), 40.8 percent of all the league’s assistant coaches were people of color last season, the lowest recorded percentage since 2006-07.
“Could we do better?,” deputy commissioner Mark Tatum asked by phone Friday. “Absolutely. We’re not resting on our laurels. We’re not satisfied. We don’t want to be best in class, best in sports leagues. We want to be best, period.”
The NBA chafes at any notion it needs a “Rooney Rule” like the NFL has. The rule is named for longtime Pittsburgh Steelers President Dan Rooney, who convinced the NFL in 2003 that teams had to interview at least one person of color for every head coaching position, after decades in which blacks were routinely passed over for head coaching jobs in that sport.
After implementation of the Rooney Rule, the number of NFL head coaches of color tripled from two to six by 2005. There have been at least three black head coaches in the NFL since 2007; there are currently five head coaches of color in the NFL, including Ron Rivera, who helped lead the Carolina Panthers to Super Bowl 50 this year. (Rivera’s parents are Puerto Rican and Mexican.)
And, it must be stated that the NBA remains well ahead of all the other major pro sports leagues in North America in diversity hiring, both at the league office and among the teams. The NBA was the only men’s sports league to get an A+ last season for racial hiring practices (and the only men’s sports league to get a B+ in gender hiring practices) in last year’s TIDES report card. TIDES, run by Dr. Richard Lapchick, has examined racial and gender hiring in men’s and women’s pro sports leagues, and among college sports teams, since 2004.
For a while, from the ’80s through the early years of this century, African-American former NBA players got front office opportunities as general managers or player personnel directors: Wayne Embry (Cleveland), Al Attles (Golden State, for whom Attles was coach for the 1975 championship team), Willis Reed (the then-New Jersey Nets), Billy McKinney (Detroit), Wes Unseld (the then-Washington Bullets), Bill Russell (Sacramento), Billy Knight (Atlanta), Elgin Baylor (Clippers) and M.L. Carr (Boston).
Michael Jordan hired Rod Higgins, a former teammate, as GM in both Washington and Charlotte, and after Higgins resigned a couple of years ago, Jordan replaced him with Cho, who’d served as an assistant GM in Oklahoma City before becoming GM in Portland in 2010.
But in the last 15 years, while some ex-players are still being hired as GMs or decision makers, the vast majority of them have been white males. The last African-American former player hired to a decision-making executive post was Rivers.
Meanwhile, Danny Ferry was hired in Atlanta (2012), Danny Ainge in Boston (2003), Pat Riley in Miami (already team president, he kicked himself upstairs in 2008 when he stepped down as coach), Larry Bird in Indiana (2003, and then again in 2013 after taking a year off in 2012), John Paxson in Chicago (2003), Rod Thorn in New Jersey (2000) and Philly (2010), Ernie Grunfeld in Washington (2003), Chris Mullin in Golden State (2004), Jerry West in Memphis (2002), Kevin Pritchard in Portland (2007), Kiki Vandeweghe in Denver (2001), Allan Bristow in New Orleans (2004), Mitch Kupchak in Los Angeles (2000), Phil Jackson in New York (2014), Marks in Brooklyn and Vlade Divac in Sacramento (2015).
Only eight African-American ex-players have been hired as a GM or executive by NBA teams since 2000: Dumars, Embry (in Toronto in 2006), Isiah Thomas (New York, 2003), Higgins (Charlotte, in 2007), Otis Smith (Orlando, in 2006), Rivers, Dell Demps (New Orleans, 2010) and Lance Blanks, hired as the Suns’ GM in 2010.
And, tellingly: King, Newton, Ujiri, longtime executive and former coach Bernie Bickerstaff (Charlotte, 2003), the Knicks’ Steve Mills and former Mavericks GM Gersson Rosas are the only men of color who did (ital)not(endital) play in the NBA or ABA who’ve been hired as full-time GMs since Vancouver, a franchise that moved to Memphis in 2001, hired Stu Jackson as its GM — in 1994. (Rosas, who was born in Colombia and was the first Latino to get a GM job in the NBA, took the Mavs’ position before the 2013-14 season, but abruptly resigned before the season began and soon after returned to Houston, where he’d run the Rockets’ D-League team.)
Meanwhile, teams have hired any number of white executives with no NBA or ABA playing experience to run the basketball operations side over the last 15 years: the current list includes Daryl Morey in Houston, Buford in San Antonio, Sam Presti in Oklahoma City, Rob Hennigan in Orlando, David Griffin in Cleveland, Gar Forman in Chicago, Sam Hinkie in Philadelphia, Chris Wallace in Memphis, John Hammond in Milwaukee, Ryan McDonough in Phoenix, Dennis Lindsey in Utah, Donnie Nelson in Dallas, Bob Myers in Golden State, Tim Connolly in Denver and Neil Olshey in Portland. (In addition, Atlanta’s Mike Budenholzer, the former associate head coach for the Spurs, now has final say on personnel with the Hawks as head coach and president of basketball operations, the same setup that Stan Van Gundy has in Detroit and Rivers has with the Clippers.)
Many of those executives, though not all, have come through the San Antonio system (and, to be fair, so did Demps and Blanks). But almost all of them have been part of the wave of analytics-friendly managers who have come to dominate NBA front offices in the last half-dozen years.
Many are regulars at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the yearly get-together of NBA execs and those who’d like to be, that was founded by Morey in 2006 and convenes in Boston.
That has dovetailed with the rise of new owners in the league, a group with numerous hedge fund billionaires that are much more involved in the day-to-day operations and decision-making than their predecessors. Long gone are the days when owners like the late Abe Pollin in Washington or Bill Davidson in Detroit had close relationships with people in their front offices, but mainly left them to their work.
“The older guys were more in tune with the basketball guys,” another executive of color said. “They gave those guys a chance that had worked there. To me, it wasn’t about race then. Ernie Grunfeld got hired, and (Jim) Paxson in Cleveland. They gave basketball guys a chance. The problem with the new ownership is they want to be so involved because of the way they made their money. Because they want to be involved, they want to speak the language. And the language is numbers.”
And non-traditional GM hires in the last few years have also been white males. Phoenix began the trend by hiring former agent Lon Babby as President of Basketball Operations in 2010. In 2011, Golden State hired former agent Bob Myers as assistant general manager, and promoted him to GM a year later.
In 2012, Memphis hired former ESPN.com columnist and statistical analyst John Hollinger, who’d developed the Player Efficiency Rating now used by most teams as a major evaluation tool, as vice president of basketball operations. The same year, former agent Jason Levien was named the Grizzlies’ CEO.
Yet former Nike executive Marc Eversley, now with the Wizards as Vice President of Scouting after spending seven years as the Raptors’ Director of Basketball Operations, hasn’t received that booster rocket to a GM spot yet.
“The young guys like Marc and Gerald Madkins, those are the guys I’m more concerned about,” a third executive of color said. “A guy like Nico (Harrison, Nike’s vice president of North America Basketball Operations) could be a GM.”
Tatum said that the league is taking a “holistic” approach to examining the issue of executives of color getting more interviews and opportunities, as well as in other areas of teams such as marketing and medical associations.
“There’s clearly a group of qualified people on our teams,” he said. “They’re in the room making those decisions. They may just not have the top job now. There are players who have interest in this associate role. When you look at former players, too, there’s so many different options for them to go into post-playing career. Some want to go into coaching. Some want to go into business. Some want to go into basketball operations on the GM side. Some of them want to be owners. You have a group of players who have all these options.”
The league has created several programs designed to put qualified minority candidates in front of teams for positions at all levels of an organization, mostly off the court.
“Our focus has to be committing to and having our teams commit to diversity across the league,” Tatum said. “We have to create this culture where diversity is important all across the organization. And to do that, you have to make sure that you have a qualified pool of candidates for all positions.”
That starts at Olympic Tower.
The TIDES report said that 35.4 percent of all professional employees in the NBA office last year were people of color and 40.9 percent were women. There were 45 women serving as vice presidents at the NBA League Office during the 2014-2015 season.
Tatum rattles off some of the numerous non-white male department heads: the league’s Chief Marketing Officer, Pamela El, is an African-American woman. The Executive Vice President of Referee Operations, Mike Bantom, is an African-American male. The head of social responsibility and player programs is a white woman, Kathy Behrens. The head of Global Marketing Partnerships, Emilio Collins, is an African-American male.
“Me,” says Tatum, whose parents are Vietnamese and African-American, making him the highest ranking league executive of color in team sports. “We would put our senior management group against anyone in terms of diversity in our ranks. Despite all that, we still went out and hired a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.”
That hire, Oris Stuart, heads the league’s Global Inclusion Council, a group of 18 team and league executives charged with examining and keeping track of each team’s efforts to increase diversity within its organization. The GIC includes executives like Rick Welts, the Warriors’ CEO, and the first openly gay team executive; Clippers President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker and the Hornets’ president and COO Fred Whitfield. The group will track the process by which teams fill vacancies.
The GIC will develop its own diversity and inclusion scorecard to “put some real metrics” around team processes, Tatum said.
“It’s those kinds of things that we’re going to start marking, that we’re going to be measuring over time,” Tatum said. “Are those things working? There are 30 jobs. These jobs don’t turn over all that often. It’s a holistic approach and we’re building a culture of inclusion. That’s what we can control. If we have the right culture in place, we know we’re going to become a more diverse organization.”
Welts missed the GIC’s first meeting in New York, as it coincided with the Warriors’ trip to the White House to meet President Barack Obama. “I have the best hall pass ever,” Welts said Sunday.
But Welts knows first-hand how important a diverse work force is in building a strong organization.
“I do think it’s an attitude you bring to work every day,” Welts said. “You have to actually believe that the end result of coming to work every day with that attitude is that you have a better organization. It’s not to fill out the survey, and it’s not to get the grade. If you actually want to get the benefit of what it all means, you have to buy into the notion that it will make your organization better. I am 100 percent of the belief that it does.
“If you sit around all day talking to people with similar backgrounds, and similar attitudes as yours, you’re not likely to learn as much as if you sit around with people who approach things with different backgrounds and different life experiences. It can’t help but be true that the end result of that process is a better outcome.”
The NBA will also begin a Basketball Operations Associates program next season. Former players will work in the league office, in areas such as team salary cap management, as well as on other basketball relations issues that need to be mastered in order to become an effective GM in the league.
“They’ll get exposure to all 30 teams,” said Tatum. “We have had experience with this in team marketing and business operations, and then they go out and run teams. The idea is, why can’t we replicate that on the basketball operations side?”
The league will seek diversity of all kinds in the program, Tatum said, pointing to the Jazz hiring Linda Luchetti last year as vice president of basketball operations, and Teresa Resch being named vice president of basketball operations and player development by the Raptors in August. (Oklahoma City hired Amanda Green in 2012 as the team’s Basketball Operations Coordinator for Legal and Administration; Green has been involved with many of the team’s personnel moves in the last few years.)
“One of the things is, we don’t just want to stop at African-Americans in those roles,” Tatum said. “We are open to and looking for a diverse pool of candidates for the basketball operations roles.”
It is also important, many black executives think, for Commissioner Adam Silver to continue advocating for diverse hires, as many believe former commissioner David Stern did in some cases.
“David pushed for Stu Jackson,” one of the black executives said. “He got a job. If the league pushes hard enough, they can help things.”
Tatum believes that the cycle will move back toward teams hiring more minorities, as the league’s programs come on line and more potential GMs of color are in the pipeline.
“What our teams value is they value people who can identify talent,” Tatum said. “The analytics can somehow help you make those kinds of decisions. But at the end of the day, the head of basketball operations job is to identify talent, and put that talent together on a team that’s going to win. Whether you’re using IBM Watson or you just have a great eye for talent and you understand the culture of winning, and players, when you see something and you just know they have that heart, that stuff you just can’t get by crunching numbers. That will always be valued in our league.”
…AND NOBODY ASKED YOU, EITHER
I’ll say this for you: I do love the Brasserie Montmarte, if it’s still in business. From Eric Kristt:
Quick question. If Trail Blazers are able to slip into the No. 5 or 6 seed out West and play a competitive series (or, even better, win a first-round series against a say Westbrook-happy OKC team), do you think they have the ability/wherewithal and/or talent to somehow, someway persuade Kevin Durant to sign with them this offseason? Could you image the firepower with a Damian Lillard/CJ McCollum/Durant big three? With Terry Stotts as an excellent defensive-minded coach and a buy-in from the defensive end by the players, they would be amazing. What do you think? It has all the factors KD likes … Great coach, small (but appreciative) market, still West Coast, humble superstars.
Aw, that’s so cool that you’ve created an alternate universe in your head. Seriously, though, I never say never. I think KD to the 503 is a long, long, longshot, but Neil Olshey knows how to put on a good presentation, and the Blazers’ chances of rebuilding quickly are greatly enhanced by my man C.J. McCollum’s emergence this season as a second ballhandling/scoring threat alongside Damian Lillard. Portland will be a force in free agency, but I would be surprised if the Blazers are a finalist in the Durant Sweepstakes.
God, it’s such a cliché, but … Houston, you have a problem. From Kelly Iko:
Concerning the Houston Rockets, is it safe to say that the job security of Daryl Morey could come into question this summer if things end badly this season? The front office has made a complete mess of things — the Lawson acquisition, the voided trade, another Dwight saga. Would the Rockets be better off moving in a different direction GM and coaching wise come summer?
No, I don’t think Morey is in trouble. He still has owner Les Alexander’s ear, and he did bring a franchise-level player in James Harden to town. Taking a flier on Lawson was hardly franchise-altering as the Rockets gave up almost nothing for him. The trade was voided by Detroit, not Houston. And if Howard decides to leave, the Rockets will have that much more money to sign players to put around James Harden. I do think, though, that Morey will get to hire just one more coach after dispatching Kevin McHale, and he better get the next one right. That will determine whether he stays or goes.
It’s the NBA Hot Tub Time Machine! From Edgars Andrulis:
My question is about 72 wins by the Bulls in 1995-96 and the Warriors’ eyes on 73-plus wins. I’m old enough to remember the Bulls’ run and also how different basketball was back then. It was more physical and lot more was okay by the refs also. This may be only my opinion, but I also think teams then were much better then now. Maybe not as talented (but we could argue also about that), but teams where tougher and (had) more self-respect.
So my question is how many wins would 2015-2016 Dubs get in the 1995-96 season? Same roster as now, against 1995-96 NBA teams? And the second part is an opposite question: if you put the 1995-96 Bulls team in 2015-16 against today’s teams, rules and so on, how many wins would they get? Just your vision and opinion since we will not get right answer anyway.
Only one word matters in your question, Edgars: rules. That’s why it’s pointless to compare teams from back then to teams today. The rules were completely different, on offense and defense.
If today’s Warriors were playing in the ’90s, when you could handcheck, bump cutters, and the like, I don’t think they’d be anywhere near 70 wins. But I don’t know how a coach would have used a guy like Steph back then, when 3-pointers still weren’t the shot of choice throughout the league. There were a lot of guys with ridiculous range back then — Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Dennis Scott, Allan Houston. But guys didn’t hunt threes. The season the Bulls won 72, Reggie only took 410 threes the whole year. By comparison, Curry’s already taken more than 600 with 25 games to go. So, would an innovative coach back then have just let Steph and Klay Thompson fire away? Hard to think of one. Maybe Don Nelson?
Or, to take the other side (which no one ever does) — would Miller or Scott or Allen put up the same kinds of numbers Curry does today if they got to shoot 15 threes every night? And: would Curry hold up to getting banged around on every possession as he came off screens, or with opposing guards like Gary Payton or Ron Harper or Mookie Blaylock able to use their hands and elbows to push him off of his sweet spots? I think he’d be an All-Star, and the leader of a team that had a chance to win. But would they? I don’t know.
Conversely, could that Bulls team downsize, play small and shoot a lot of threes as teams do now? Well, Michael Jordan made 41 percent of his threes that season — his first full season after taking almost two years off to play baseball. Would Phil Jackson run the Triangle offense? If so, he could have easily rolled out a lineup where Steve Kerr (the irony!) got more run at the point, with Jordan at the two, Harp at the three, Scottie Pippen at the four and Dennis Rodman at the five. Or Phil could have moved Toni Kukoc in as the stretch four (he didn’t shoot a great 3-point percentage, but I’m pretty sure he would have let it go more in today’s game and gotten better at it), with Pip at the three, Harp at the two and MJ bringing it up — remember, no hand checking.
Can you imagine Jordan with a full head of steam, knowing there wouldn’t be any re-routing? My God. And if you think the Warriors switch everything, think about Jordan, Pippen, Harper and Rodman unleashed! I don’t know if the Bulls would have won 70, but they’d be into the 60s, I’m pretty sure. So, this old fogey is saying the Bulls could adapt to today’s game easier than the Warriors would have to adapt to yesterday’s — but not by much.
Send your questions, comments, criticisms and details on how you will explain all of this to the furry creatures now without their human companions to daldridgetnt@gmail.com. If your e-mail is sufficiently funny, thought-provoking, well-written or snarky, we just might publish it!
MVP WATCH
(last week’s averages in parentheses)
1) Stephen Curry (43.8 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 7.3 apg, .608 FG, .900 FT): I’ve already voted him MVP. For next season.
2) Kawhi Leonard (24.7 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 1.7 apg, .523 FG, .952 FT): Returns after missing three games with a calf injury and appears to pick up right where he left off.
3) Kevin Durant (31 ppg, 11.3 rpg, 6 apg, .515 FG, .929 FT): Tough trifecta to finish Saturday night against the Warriors — turnover in the final seconds that gives Golden State a chance to tie, fouling Andre Iguodala at the buzzer, fouling out in overtime.
4) Russell Westbrook (31.3 ppg, 6 rpg, 11.7 apg, .465 FG, .821 FT): Yes, I did notice the shoes.
5) LeBron James (20 ppg, 7.7 rpg, 6.3 apg, .449 FG, .632 FT): DNP Sunday against the Wizards for rest/maintenance, a smart move for a Cavs team that needs him fresh in the playoffs.
BY THE NUMBERS
129 — Consecutive games in which Stephen Curry has made at least one 3-pointer, breaking the previous record of 127 set by the Hawks’ Kyle Korver from 2012-14. And with 12 threes Saturday against Oklahoma City (you may have seen this one), Curry also has already broken his own single-season record for 3-pointers. He has 288, two more than the mark he set last season, with 24 games to go in 2015-16.
41 — Consecutive games without a win this season by the 76ers when they’ve trailed after three quarters.
$3,000,000 — Reported amount of money Joe Johnson left on the table in Brooklyn as part of his buyout agreement with the Nets, allowing him to sign with the Heat last week, turning down offers from the Hawks and Cavaliers, among other contenders.
I’M FEELIN’ …
1) Thunder-Warriors was the best Saturday night I’ve had since the OUIHOPE (don’t ask) party back in ’85.
2) At first, I reflexively dismissed Mark Cuban’s idea of pushing back the 3-point line, but he has a point: pushing the line back would keep the three in the game, but also allow the mid-range game, currently anathema to the analytics crowd, to survive. It wouldn’t impact Steph Curry in the slightest, but it would create even more spacing for everyone else. It could be the best of both worlds and bring some balance back to the game. It’s worth some thought by the Competition Committee this summer.
3) Perhaps you shouldn’t carry so much bacon in your trousers.
4) Happy Leap Birthday to all y’all Feb. 29ers! So, when do you celebrate your born day when it disappears every three years — Feb. 28? March 1? Curious.
5) This is definitely adult reading, but it’s a beautifully written account of an autistic young man’s search for true love, through the eyes of his non-autistic sister. Worth a few minutes of your time.
NOT FEELIN’ …
1) Time is always a one-way prism. When you’re young, you see so clearly that the old folks don’t get that the world’s changed and their ways don’t work, and when you get older, you believe with all your heart that things were so much harder for you than they are now for this generation. So it’s pointless to me to agree or disagree with Oscar Robertson, Isiah Thomas and other former greats who have said they think Steph Curry is shooting in an era of diminished defense. It’s ridiculous, though, to opine — as some have — that the Big O and Zeke are somehow out of their depth to give their opinions, as if their maniacal drive and work ethic as players has some kind of expiration date on it. You can heartily disagree with them, as Draymond Green’s mom did over the weekend, but to say they should shut up and sit down is something you, NBA fan/bloviating talk radio host/know-it-all TV pundit, haven’t earned the right to say.
2) Sometimes, we all forget that when someone in trouble “needs help,” that there are a lot of people who are already trying, very hard, to provide that help. I pray that Delante West, a good dude fighting an insidious disease, can get some peace.
3) RIP, Eddie Einhorn, the Godfather of modern college basketball on television.
4) Sad to hear the actor Tony Burton passed on Thursday. He played the boxing trainer Tony “Duke” Evers in the Rocky movies — he trained Apollo Creed in the first two films, and from Rocky III on, he trained Rocky — including the climactic fight in Rocky IV with the Russian Ivan Drago. (It was the ’80s. Times were different.) In just a few scenes in those movies, I came to love Duke and look forward to his scenes, as he drove his fighters past their limits.
Q & A: ANTHONY DAVIS
Andre Drummond’s cover was perfect, and it didn’t matter. Anthony Davis squared up on the 6-foot-11 Drummond, a fellow All-Star who just happens to block 1.5 shots per game, and dropped in another jumper, part of the fusillade that Davis dropped on the Pistons last Sunday, scoring 59 points and grabbing 20 rebounds in the Pelicans’ victory.
The win was another high point in New Orleans’ up and down season; the Pelicans followed it with a desultory loss in Washington, rallied for a huge win on Thursday on TNT over the Thunder, but ended the week by somehow losing to the Timberwolves at home.
The Pelicans have struggled all season, with injuries to key players like Tyreke Evans, Jrue Holiday and Eric Gordon that have kept them and others out for long stretches. Meanwhile, Davis soldiers on, dominant at both ends.
Along with being eighth in the league the scoring at 24.1 per game, he’s currently third in the league in blocks per game (2.2) and eighth in rebounds (10.2 per game). The game in Detroit only served as another agonizing reminder of what’s possible for the Pelicans, who are 5 ½ games out of the West’s No. 8 spot. At least Davis, who signed a $145 million extension last summer through 2020, is showing no signs yet of discontent. He became just the fourth player in the last 40 years — Moses Malone did it in 1982, with Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Webber each doing it in 2001 — to go for at least 50 points and 20 rebounds in a game. And it could have been more.
“He’s still too doggone unselfish,” Pelicans Coach Alvin Gentry said last week. “He’s still looking for guys to pass to sometimes, on the pindowns and a couple of plays we ran. I said ‘these games don’t come along all the time, and you have to take full advantage of them.’
But Gentry believes there’s even more Davis can add to his game in the summer. “Obviously, his body is going to mature and he’s going to get stronger in certain areas,” Gentry said. “We’ve got to just continue to work with him in the player development part of it and make sure that he is taking the next step.”
Which is scary.
Me: Your first two games of last week — 59 points against Detroit Sunday, nine points against the Wizards Tuesday — are kind of emblematic of the season you and the team have had. How difficult has that inconstancy been to deal with?
Anthony Davis: Very tough. I mean, it seems like every time you get into a rhythm, a game like (Tuesday) happens. We had two great games against Philly and Detroit, and then this happens … it’s tough, especially when you’re battling injuries to key guys that you need to win. You’ve just got to deal with it, fight through adversity and keep playing for each other.
Me: How have you been able to continue developing your game?
AD: Well, just keep playing. This season has definitely tested me a lot. There’s been a lot of obstacles in my way, and I’ve tried to overcome it. It’s been tough, but at the same time, you have to have fun with it. It’s still a game. You can’t get too high or get too low.
Me: I know you’re still on the periphery of the playoff race and that is the top goal, but what can you build on with the rest of the season whether or not you make the playoffs?
AD: We just want to establish a culture with the way that we play, the style we’re going to play, try to move forward. We know that we’ve got guys hurt, and these guys will be back. When they come back, we’ve just got to keep moving forward, keep getting better. Whether we make the playoffs or not, we’ve got to establish a culture and an environment that we’ve got to have for seasons to come.
Me: Do you still see, with the way Alvin wants to play, that it could work?
AD: Yeah. We show flashes, and then we go back to our old ways. It’s tough when guys are out, in and out of the lineup. You’ve got to try to find a way to keep everything going. When we’ve been healthy we’ve kind of showed the team we can be and that Alvin wants.
Me: Have you had any chance to spend any meaningful time with [ex-Pelicans coach] Monty [Williams] since his wife passed?
AD: Yeah, I have, at the funeral and the day after it happened, I talked to him a little bit, just to catch up.
Me: Did you take anything from his speech?
AD: Yeah, just the whole thing about forgiveness. As we grieve over Ingrid and Monty’s family, at the same time, there’s another family that lost one of their family members as well. He literally talked about forgiveness and forgiving, knowing that she didn’t wake up that day trying to hurt his wife. I think that was the most important thing, just trying to forgive.
Me: Does that provide perspective for all the things that tend to come up as “problems” during the season?
AD: Sure. For sure. It puts everything in perspective, knowing that this is just a game, a small piece of our lives. At the same time, when Monty was here, he used to tell us, when we lose, you’ve got to keep your heads up. It’s not like anybody’s going to war or got cancer or anything like that. It’s just a game. You get paid to do something that you love. That’s how you’ve got to look at it. It definitely puts everything in perspective.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
— Draymond Green (@Money23Green), Friday, 5:06 p.m., during a back-and-forth between himself and teammates Andrew Bogut and Steph Curry. Bogut started it by mocking the statements of former players on Twitter claiming their teams could beat this season’s Golden State squad. Bogut said his Under 14 team in Australia would have beaten the Warriors by 10, and one of his teammates named “Fat Jimmy” would have locked Curry up.
THEY SAID IT
“I think in retrospect trading Isaiah Thomas when we did was a mistake. I think sometimes in the recruitment process things sound better in July than they do in November. He wanted more, he wanted a bigger role and I understand why: He’s a talented player. In retrospect, we should have carried him into the summer. If there’s one (decision) that stands out, if I could get a mulligan, that’d be it.”
— Suns GM Ryan McDonough, in an interview with Arizona Sports 98.7 FM last week, disclosing his regret that Phoenix dealt Thomas to Boston at the trade deadline last year as part of a three-way deal with the Celtics and Bucks that brought guard Brandon Knight to the Suns.
“I haven’t gotten off the floor since my 2,000th block.”
— Tim Duncan, who notched his 3,000th career block in Saturday’s win over Houston, becoming just the fifth player in league history to reach that mark. Duncan also passed Karl Malone for sixth place on the league’s all-time rebounding list.
“He always talks about The Finals they lost. I think he can’t swallow that pill. He always talks about it. You can see how angry he is when he talks about that Finals.”
— Timberwolves forward Gorgui Dieng, to the Boston Globe, on teammate Kevin Garnett’s obsession with the Celtics’ loss to the Lakers in the 2010 Finals after Boston took a 3-2 lead into the final two games of the series.
Longtime NBA reporter and columnist David Aldridge is an analyst for TNT. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
