Billups: The NBA is light years ahead of the NFL in the way it works

LOS ANGELES — As someone honing his craft in a league where minority coaches hold the majority of head coaching jobs, Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers he said he can’t help but appreciate how the NBA works compared to the NFL.

“I’m really proud of our league, to be honest,” Billups said before his Blazers faced Los Angeles Lakers Wednesday night. “I think we’re light years ahead of any other league. I’m very proud of that, and I think a lot of it has to do with our players and our union, they’ve been pretty aggressive about what has to happen.”

Billups, one of seven African-American coaches hired to fill eight NBA head coaching vacancies last offseason, offered his comments on the league’s hiring practices after being asked about Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL, which the former Miami Dolphins coach filed Tuesday alleging racist hiring practices in the league.

The 32-team NFL currently has one African-American head coach: Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers. By comparison, the 30-team NBA currently has 14 African-American head coaches, and 16 minority head coaches in total.

Billups said he believes the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which was introduced in 2003 in an attempt to increase minority hiring throughout the league, hasn’t achieved what it set out to do.

“I’ll be honest with you: I’m not, it probably sounds crazy, but I’m not really a big fan of the Rooney Rule,” Billups said. “I think they’re just making you interview a black candidate, but if that black candidate really doesn’t have a chance, don’t interview them.

“So I think it just gives you one checkbox in the situation, and I don’t think that’s fair. But for some reason they thought that rule was going to be the great equalizer and it’s not. It’s not. So I’m not crazy about that rule and a couple other things in the NFL, but I’m lucky to be in the NBA.”

Sacramento Kings interim coach Alvin Gentry, one of the most successful black coaches in NBA history who led six different teams during a career spanning more than 30 years, said he has feelings for Flores.

The Dolphins fired Flores, who is Black, last month. The New York Giants scheduled an in-person interview with him for their head coaching vacancy, which he accepted. But after doing so, Flores got a text from New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who accidentally told him the Giants had already decided on Brian Daboll for the job. Flores, in his lawsuit, called his New York interview a “sham,” saying it was done only to comply with the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which now requires at least one minority candidate to interview in person.

“I believe that [es] absolutely ridiculous if they’ve already hired a coach and then interviewed him,” Gentry said. “So I can see why that would be very disturbing … I don’t know how the NFL works, so I’m not aware of that, so It would be hard for me to answer.”

“I’m very proud of where the NBA is. I don’t know enough about the NFL to say that.”

During Billups’ rookie season with the Boston Celtics in 1997–98, only seven of the 32 head coaches that season were black (there were more than 30 due to layoffs during the season). He has seen the NBA’s diversity and inclusion gradually improve over the 25 years he has been associated with it: a league committed to a player pool that is more than 70% black.

While the coaching landscape now better reflects the racial makeup of the league’s players, Billups said NBA front offices still lag behind.

“Our next level continues here in this position [de entrenador en jefe] and also at headquarters,” Billups said. “We need more minorities at headquarters. You have to start somewhere and you have to keep improving, but right now, in the league right now, we have to be better there. [en las oficinas centrales]”.

But Billups said he has faith the NBA will get there.

“I think we’re in a good place,” he said.

ESPN’s Nick Friedell contributed to this report.

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Billups: The NBA is light years ahead of the NFL in the way it works