The National Basketball Association, known as the NBA, is incredibly popular in the United States and worldwide. A Gallup poll from 2017 found that 11% of pollsters said that basketball was their favorite sport to watch, only behind [American] football. Founded in 1946, the NBA has become much more than a sports league that Americans like to watch.
The NBA has become an integral part of American culture in many ways, specifically in fashion. Many sneakers from Nike, Converse, Adidas, and Jordan that were once made for NBA players have become classic everyday shoes in modern fashion. Streetwear in China has been influenced by the NBA, which is not surprising due to the rapid increase in popularity over the past few decades. As basketball continued to gain popularity in the US, the Women’s NBA (WNBA) was established in 1996, 50 years after the NBA. Once a professional sport only open to men, there was now a league in which women could showcase their skills.
What Does the Data Say About Coaching Diversity in the NBA?
With the establishment of the WNBA, one would assume that there would be overwhelmingly women coaches of the teams in the league since this is the case in the NBA. However, according to the Female Coaching Network, only 42% of head coaches in the WNBA for the 2021 season are women (5 out of 12 coaches). Additionally, since the start of the league in 1996, 42 of the 82 total head coaches (or 52%) that have been in the league have been women. This is not taking into consideration the assistant and specialized coaches on these teams.
The disparity between the number of men coaches in the WNBA and the number of women coaches in the NBA shows the double standard between men and women coaches in professional sports leagues. It is clear that men play an integral role in coaching women’s professional basketball, but we can’t say the same for women coaches in the NBA, or at least not yet.
What Does This Mean For Coaching in the NBA?
The lack of diversity and inclusion on the coaching staff in the NBA has been an issue since its inception, but things are slowly changing. According to the NBA, in the 2019-2020 season, 11 women held assistant coaching positions. This is remarkable considering that there have only been 15 women who have served as assistant coaches (including these 11 women) in NBA history. This increase in including women coaches in the NBA has primarily been after 2017. According to the NBA, 12 of the 15 women who served as assistant coaches in the NBA were hired after 2017. While this seems like a step in the right direction, for the 2021-2022 season, there are currently only seven women assistant coaches in the NBA.
