Yahoo Sports. Bulls new GM to be person of color

[Dresden]

Jesus christ we live in such cowardly world, stop pandering and just give the job to the person that has earned it. The irony in all of it is that hiring somebody based solely on the color of their skin is just about the most racist thing you can possibly do.

Left wing goal post shifting at its finest, trash like this make me ashamed to consider myself liberal.

If it were only that simple. If candidates could just be graded on a scale of 1-100 and then you just pick the highest rated, we really wouldn't need to go through so much hassle. But in the real world, there is nothing so specific as a number that you can assign to each candidate's chances of being the best hire. You might give a candidate a few extra points, for instance, because they are African American, and that person's experiences and background might bring something to the organization that a white candidate lacks. Esp. since the league is 75% African America. Is that racist? No, it's just taking a person's background into consideration, along with many other factors like experience, education, and reputation.

And there is also unintentional bias that comes into equation. If you're a white owner, and have surrounded yourself with white staff, have mostly white friends, look around the league and see mostly other white people in the front office, you could easily assume that hiring a person of color is going to take you outside your comfort zone, and therefore you may just not take that risk. Which is why things like the Rooney Rule exist.

[HomoSapien]

There are not a lot of minorities with the experience.

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divac all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

[sonny]

There are not a lot of minorities with the experience.

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divace all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

And this is when the "criteria" changes.

In this thread people have brought up Kerr and Pax's degrees.

Pax went from radio to running the Bulls.

Kerr went from commentating, to consulting to being hired to run the Suns.

Marks retired in 2011, named basketball operations assistant and GM for the Spurs G League team in 2012, became an assistant coach in 2013, named assistant GM later that year and in 2016 was hired to run the Nets.

Ainge was a coach for 3 years, quit in 99, then became a commentator, then hired to run the Celtics in 03.

[cjbulls]

There are not a lot of minorities with the experience.

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divace all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

Ok, so what criteria should be used for unexperienced candidates? How should we evaluate them?

Ainge, Paxson and Divac had long playing careers with the organization that hired them. So you see where they had an in with the organization
Sean Marks had executive and coaching experience with San Antonio, the darling franchise of the moment. *And the hiring was for the worst job in the NBA by far, the Nets without FRPs and talent. He almost did not even take the job.
Steve Kerr was a part of the ownership group that bought the Suns so clearly he had an in there unlike a typical candidate.

The easiest answer seems to be the Ainge/Pax/Divac long-time player route, but do the Bulls have any good long-time black candidates? Deng and Pippen seem like the only reasonable candidates that fit the profile. It's just not that easy to find someone in that situation.

[HomoSapien]

There are not a lot of minorities with the experience.

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divace all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

And this is when the "criteria" changes.

In this thread people have brought up Kerr and Pax's degrees.

Pax went from radio to running the Bulls.

Kerr went from commentating, to consulting to being hired to run the Suns.

Marks retired in 2011, named basketball operations assistant and GM for the Spurs G League team in 2012, became an assistant coach in 2013, named assistant GM later that year and in 2016 was hired to run the Nets.

Ainge was a coach for 3 years, quit in 99, then became a commentator, then hired to run the Celtics in 03.

And on the flipside:

Elton Brand was a player development consultant for the Sixers and then the GM of a D-League team before being promoted to as GM of the SIxers.

Trajan Langdon became a scout for the Spurs and then was hired as an assistant general manager for the Nets before being hired as the Pelicans GM.

Doc Rivers coached for 13 years and won a championship before becoming president of the Clippers.

James Jones is really the only African American candidate I can think of (please correct me if I'm wrong) who was hired without "the experience" to be at a high-level position.

[HomoSapien]

There are not a lot of minorities with the experience.

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divace all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

Ok, so what criteria should be used for unexperienced candidates? How should we evaluate them?

Ainge, Paxson and Divac had long playing careers with the organization that hired them. So you see where they had an in with the organization
Sean Marks had executive and coaching experience with San Antonio, the darling franchise of the moment.
Steve Kerr was a part of the ownership group that bought the Suns so clearly he had an in there unlike a typical candidate.

The easiest answer seems to be the Ainge/Pax/Divac long-time player route, but do the Bulls have any good long-time black candidates? Deng and Pippen seem like the only reasonable candidates that fit the profile. It's just not that easy to find someone in that situation.

I don't really care who wins out and for what reason, as long as a diverse pool of candidates are routinely being interviewed.

Edit: We've seen former players with little experience (Kerr) make outstanding coaches and outstanding GMs (Ainge). At the end of the day, talent and intelligence is what is needed to succeed at these roles, so if we were regularly interviewing diverse candidates I wouldn't have a criticism here.

[cjbulls]

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divace all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

Ok, so what criteria should be used for unexperienced candidates? How should we evaluate them?

Ainge, Paxson and Divac had long playing careers with the organization that hired them. So you see where they had an in with the organization
Sean Marks had executive and coaching experience with San Antonio, the darling franchise of the moment.
Steve Kerr was a part of the ownership group that bought the Suns so clearly he had an in there unlike a typical candidate.

The easiest answer seems to be the Ainge/Pax/Divac long-time player route, but do the Bulls have any good long-time black candidates? Deng and Pippen seem like the only reasonable candidates that fit the profile. It's just not that easy to find someone in that situation.

I don't really care who wins out and for what reason, as long as a diverse pool of candidates are routinely being interviewed.

Edit: We've seen former players with little experience (Kerr) make outstanding coaches and outstanding GMs (Ainge). At the end of the day, talent and intelligence is what is needed to succeed at these roles, so if we were regularly interviewing diverse candidates I wouldn't have a criticism here.

Yes, I think most agree the best GMs are probably unknown. I am of the assumption many of the best are not even working in the NBA (for example, see what Morey brought to the table). I am asking how do you find them. It's easy to say they should hire someone diverse, but you're not identifying how it should be done ("I don't really care....what reason").

And if you cannot, then you're asking them to hire a black person simply because they are black. Which everyone agrees is a poor reason.

[sonny]

Yes, I think most agree the best GMs are probably unknown. I am of the assumption many of the best are not even working in the NBA (for example, see what Morey brought to the table). I am asking how do you find them. It's easy to say they should hire someone diverse, but you're not identifying how it should be done ("I don't really care....what reason").

And if you cannot, then you're asking them to hire a black person simply because they are black. Which everyone agrees is a poor reason.

Marc Spears listed several guys with experience in front office positions, including Milt Newton, who was the assistant director for USA Basketball, VP of the Wizards player personnel starting in 03, was hired as GM for the Wolves in 2013 before being let go to bring Thibs on and is now assistant GM of the Bucks.

There are guys that like Kerr are former players and commentators.

There are guys like Ainge that had some coaching experience before being named GM.

There are a bunch of former players that I'm sure would love the opportunity to work in the front office.

I'm not sure why it would be hard to find black candidates in a league full of black people.

[cjbulls]

Yes, I think most agree the best GMs are probably unknown. I am of the assumption many of the best are not even working in the NBA (for example, see what Morey brought to the table). I am asking how do you find them. It's easy to say they should hire someone diverse, but you're not identifying how it should be done ("I don't really care....what reason").

And if you cannot, then you're asking them to hire a black person simply because they are black. Which everyone agrees is a poor reason.

Marc Spears listed several guys with experience in front office positions, including Milt Newton, who was the assistant director for USA Basketball, VP of the Wizards player personnel starting in 03, was hired as GM for the Wolves in 2013 before being let go to bring Thibs on and is now assistant GM of the Bucks.

There are guys that like Kerr are former players and commentators.

There are guys like Ainge that had some coaching experience before being named GM.

There are a bunch of former players that I'm sure would love the opportunity to work in the front office.

I'm not sure why it would be hard to find black candidates in a league full of black people.

As I noted before, there are reasons the players you mentioned were hired. Ainge was a long-time player for the championship Celtics and had ties to the org. Just as Pax did and Divac did.

Kerr was part of the ownership group that bought the suns. He was obviously close with the owners.

Put yourself in the position of an owner. What criteria are you using to hire someone and who does that lead you to? It is not an easy process.

[HomoSapien]

Yes, I think most agree the best GMs are probably unknown. I am of the assumption many of the best are not even working in the NBA (for example, see what Morey brought to the table). I am asking how do you find them. It's easy to say they should hire someone diverse, but you're not identifying how it should be done ("I don't really care....what reason").

And if you cannot, then you're asking them to hire a black person simply because they are black. Which everyone agrees is a poor reason.

The same way you find not traditionally qualified white candidates. Since now we're talking more specifically about former players, the pool of former African American players is much larger than white players.

You mentioned that maybe we should look into hiring players who had long careers with the Bulls. I don't think we need to do that, but if we did BJ Armstrong is someone who should be reconsidered. Nazr Mohammed is a guy who played here and was brought back way past his on-court value because of who he was as a person. He could have been someone we groomed into a management role. Sean Marks had no connection to the Nets franchise, but was a guy with a good reputation around the league. Tons of black candidates like that exist like Grant Hill and Chauncey Billups. Kareem has been mentioned in this thread. Shareef Abur-Rahim is president of the D-League. Dahanty Jones and Damien Wilkins are graduates of the NBA Leadership Development Program.

Earlier I brought up Milt Newton and Joe Dumars (if you're considering BC and Ferry, why shouldn't you consider Dumars).

There's really no shortage of candidates, especially if you're open to former players.

[cjbulls]

Yes, I think most agree the best GMs are probably unknown. I am of the assumption many of the best are not even working in the NBA (for example, see what Morey brought to the table). I am asking how do you find them. It's easy to say they should hire someone diverse, but you're not identifying how it should be done ("I don't really care....what reason").

And if you cannot, then you're asking them to hire a black person simply because they are black. Which everyone agrees is a poor reason.

The same way you find not traditionally qualified white candidates. Since now we're talking more specifically about former players, the pool of former African American players is much larger than white players.

You mentioned that maybe we should look into hiring players who had long careers with the Bulls. I don't think we need to do that, but if we did BJ Armstrong is someone who should be reconsidered. Nazr Mohammed is a guy who played here and was brought back way past his on-court value because of who he was as a person. He could have been someone we groomed into a management role. Sean Marks had no connection to the Nets franchise, but was a guy with a good reputation around the league. Tons of black candidates like that exist like Grant Hill and Chauncey Billups. Kareem has been mentioned in this thread. Shareef Abur-Rahim is president of the D-League. Dahanty Jones and Damien Wilkins are graduates of the NBA Leadership Development Program.

Earlier I brought up Milt Newton and Joe Dumars (if you're considering BC and Ferry, why shouldn't you consider Dumars).

There's really no shortage of candidates, especially if you're open to former players.

Nazr Mohammed is being considered (or so it was reported), and BJ Armstrong was considered and then determined to not be a fit. T

The other names are just names, just as I can rattle off names of white, asian, and hispanic candidates. You seem to be saying just pick a black guy, rather than find someone you want to run the org. They tried to interview Weaver, they hired Polk.

This article lists GM interview candidates and 6 of the 7 are black. https://sports.yahoo.com/rumor-former-pelicans-gm-dell-012543341.html

[Friend_Of_Haley]

Danny Ainge, John Paxson, Sean Marks, Steve Kerr, and Vlade Divace all come to mind as people were hired without "the experience". I don't think experience is everything, but lack of experience seems to be dismissed more for white candidates than it does for minorities.

Ok, so what criteria should be used for unexperienced candidates? How should we evaluate them?

Ainge, Paxson and Divac had long playing careers with the organization that hired them. So you see where they had an in with the organization
Sean Marks had executive and coaching experience with San Antonio, the darling franchise of the moment.
Steve Kerr was a part of the ownership group that bought the Suns so clearly he had an in there unlike a typical candidate.

The easiest answer seems to be the Ainge/Pax/Divac long-time player route, but do the Bulls have any good long-time black candidates? Deng and Pippen seem like the only reasonable candidates that fit the profile. It's just not that easy to find someone in that situation.

I don't really care who wins out and for what reason, as long as a diverse pool of candidates are routinely being interviewed.

Edit: We've seen former players with little experience (Kerr) make outstanding coaches and outstanding GMs (Ainge). At the end of the day, talent and intelligence is what is needed to succeed at these roles, so if we were regularly interviewing diverse candidates I wouldn't have a criticism here.

I agree.

To add, I think there's two types of biases they exist. Theres personal biases which everyone has and should be honest about overcoming. This the bias where if you had two nearly identical candidates, things like gender, nationality, immigration status, color, etc shouldn't have bearing. As an example when I was recommending a former colleague for a role I had my boss hold an initial bias becuase of his name which caused him to ask if he was "American". My boss is a good guy and was struggling to overcome his bias because at his old firm they hired a lot of Indian staff who he felt weren't effective communicators with clients. We hired the guy and he had in fact immigrated to America a young kid so hes still not a citizen, but I consider him American for all intents and purposes. And he occasionally says something grammatically odd, but it doesn't affect his overall ability to communicate IMO. If his name was John Smith, there would never have been a question raised, but John Smith could be an awful communicator totally unrelated to his emigrant status.

But beyond that, institutional biases still are strong (whether driven from widescale personal biases like above, or just other more nuanced reasons). Those institutional biases mean you may need to consider differing "merits" when considering candidates, especially if you want to promote a diverse workplace. As your point highlights, there's a variety of paths successful and unsuccessful hires alike have taken. In my experience, the things we typically look at like "years experience" are way less predictive than we act like they are (in any role). Even if you don't care at all for diversity for diversities sake, the fact that you could exclude candidates based on poor predictive qualifiers like years experience should be enough to convince people that unique backgrounds should be considered if the person brings other strong merits that are relevant to the overall success of the role.

[dougthonus]

To your other point that I'm "only counting 2 guys in 17 years" --- so what? In your mind that's such a small sample size that it's not worth mentioning. In my opinion, that's exactly the blindspot.

If anyone ever presented to me a statistic like that without mentioning such a major caveat, I would immediately dismiss anything they said afterwards when I found out and assume they were a scam artist of some type. I wouldn't do that with you because I know you care deeply about this topic and know you well enough personally to know you're not trying to scam anyone or slander anyone, but that is why I feel passionate about you using statistics in this fashion and have brought it up repeatedly.

I will also not mention it again though.

This is a job that rarely has openings and lasts for decades. To my knowledge, we've never interviewed a diverse candidate for these roles. So that's the blind spot. Under the Reinsdorf regimes, we haven't had representation in that role for 35 years, and if that trend continues the streak could run on for another few decades.

I'm fairly certain that BJ Armstrong interviewed for the role when it was given to Paxson, which was the last time there was an interview for the role prior to this time. You could certainly argue that Paxson himself did not value diversity enough to make the proper looks around the league though. You could also argue that Paxson himself just didn't add enough people to the staff (or perhaps didn't have the budget that AK apparently does).

AK appears to value diversity quite a bit from what little we can tell so far. The coaching candidates, GM candidates and assistant GM candidates all seem to have a strong diversity profile based on what has been leaked to date. So it would appear, the Bulls are going to be looking for the best people and instead of looking for the best people but only looking at traditional white males, they're looking at everyone.

I work in a field that has a lot of similarities to being in the NBA (both as a player and an executive). How do I know that? Because I worked in the D-League (not saying it's the same, but just that I've lived the similarities). In the job I have now, I have the highest degree of everyone on staff and am also almost always the only minority on staff (which typically consists of twelve to fifteen people). In a good year, there might be a second minority but never more than two and so far I'm the only one that's been brought back past my first year (sorry to others for being so vague, but Doug knows what I do). The people I work with are good people, who often talk about the need to be more progressive and inclusive. Unfortunately when it comes to hiring, it rarely seems to happen and the common reason is that they weren't able to find a diverse pool of candidates with the right experience (aka merit). Most of the candidates are personal referrals from other colleagues. I always cringe when I hear about the inability to find diverse candidates with strong resumes because it took me about seven years of being at an assistant level role until I was able to break through to where I am now. Throughout those seven years, I was always the most educated person in the office. The first time I was in serious consideration for the job I have now, I didn't get it and the person who did had no prior experience and no advanced degree. The person who was hired was recommended by my bosses' close friend and ultimately was pretty terrible. I suppose the reason I'm sharing this story, is because I believe an NBA front-office often operates the same way. I don't think the Chicago Bulls are purposely trying not to be inclusive, but we all know the history of how this organization and how it has been conducted as an old-boys club. That is why I believe this organization has a blind spot towards hiring diverse candidates. No one here is suggesting the Bulls hire a token candidate who is woefully unprepared to be a high-level exec. What I, and others, are suggesting is that when an organization has a poor history of hiring diverse candidates it needs to proactively seek them out and make a commitment to becoming more inclusive.

I'm truly sorry for you that you have been the victim of racial bias (even if it was subconscious and not ill-intentioned). I have also seen that same type of story play out over and over for people I know. Oddly enough i spent a decade working at a dutch company and often saw a glass ceiling for non-Dutch people and at times felt the same sense of helplessness. I agree with you that it's a huge problem in society.

My wife has had tons of similar types of situations where she's been passed over for being a racial minority and female for relatively incompetent white men. I am definitely on your side with that.

I've also already said, I agree with your larger point that the Bulls exhibit some of these same biases and behaviors. To which I will state again, I do agree with you. Particularly when it comes to head coaching decisions. They have done a great job of helping young black assistants get their first jobs, but they've not done that with head coaches and while I can't really say for sure because I don't know the whole history, it seems like even the "assistant head coach" or whatever you want to call the second in command feels like its generally always been a white guy (though have not researched it).

So I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm saying make your point without bending statistics in ways that are misleading.

[sonny]

As I noted before, there are reasons the players you mentioned were hired. Ainge was a long-time player for the championship Celtics and had ties to the org. Just as Pax did and Divac did.

In a league that's been at least 70% for the past few decades, surely a franchise finding a black player that has ties to them should be pretty easy, right?

Put yourself in the position of an owner. What criteria are you using to hire someone and who does that lead you to? It is not an easy process.

The problem is that the criteria appears to change based on who we're talking about.

Apparently the criteria is years of front office experience at a certain level with a lot of responsibility, but sometimes it can just be playing for the team at some point or knowing the owner pretty well.

BJ Armstrong played 7 years with the Bulls, was special assistant to Krause, but Reinsdorf went with Pax who had zero front office experience. Maybe BJ wasn't right for the job, but as I've said before, owners hire who they want to hire.

There's no strict criteria until someone wants to explain why certain people weren't brought in. I've never heard Pax's MBA as a reason to hire him until this thread, where it was used to explain why his complete lack of experience in a front office didn't exclude him from the process.

There's this talk about how tough the process is, but the process constantly leaves out black candidates. In a process that allows the flexibility to interview someone with or without front office experience, isn't there something wrong with the process if black people are being left out?

Correct me if I'm wrong, Weaver's name didn't come out until after Spears' article. He was not mentioned in the first group of candidates. Weaver said he eventually turned down the offer that came because it was known by that point that the Bulls were going to go with AK.

Again, no one is saying hire a black person just to hire a black person.

Based on the experience of those hired to similar positions around the league, the fact that black people are struggling to even get interviewed is an issue.

[cjbulls]

As I noted before, there are reasons the players you mentioned were hired. Ainge was a long-time player for the championship Celtics and had ties to the org. Just as Pax did and Divac did.

In a league that's been at least 70% for the past few decades, surely a franchise finding a black player that has ties to them should be pretty easy, right?

Put yourself in the position of an owner. What criteria are you using to hire someone and who does that lead you to? It is not an easy process.

The problem is that the criteria appears to change based on who we're talking about.

Apparently the criteria is years of front office experience at a certain level with a lot of responsibility, but sometimes it can just be playing for the team at some point or knowing the owner pretty well.

BJ Armstrong played 7 years with the Bulls, was special assistant to Krause, but Reinsdorf went with Pax who had zero front office experience. Maybe BJ wasn't right for the job, but as I've said before, owners hire who they want to hire.

There's no strict criteria until someone wants to explain why certain people weren't brought in. I've never heard Pax's MBA as a reason to hire him until this thread, where it was used to explain why his complete lack of experience in a front office didn't exclude him from the process.

There's this talk about how tough the process is, but the process constantly leaves out black candidates. In a process that allows the flexibility to interview someone with or without front office experience, isn't there something wrong with the process if black people are being left out?

Correct me if I'm wrong, Weaver's name didn't come out until after Spears' article. He was not mentioned in the first group of candidates. Weaver said he eventually turned down the offer that came because it was known by that point that the Bulls were going to go with AK.

Again, no one is saying hire a black person just to hire a black person.

Based on the experience of those hired to similar positions around the league, the fact that black people are struggling to even get interviewed is an issue.

Who are the Bulls with ties that they are missing out on?

[Shill]

I work in a field that has a lot of similarities to being in the NBA (both as a player and an executive). How do I know that? Because I worked in the D-League (not saying it's the same, but just that I've lived the similarities). In the job I have now, I have the highest degree of everyone on staff and am also almost always the only minority on staff (which typically consists of twelve to fifteen people). In a good year, there might be a second minority but never more than two and so far I'm the only one that's been brought back past my first year (sorry to others for being so vague, but Doug knows what I do). The people I work with are good people, who often talk about the need to be more progressive and inclusive. Unfortunately when it comes to hiring, it rarely seems to happen and the common reason is that they weren't able to find a diverse pool of candidates with the right experience (aka merit). Most of the candidates are personal referrals from other colleagues. I always cringe when I hear about the inability to find diverse candidates with strong resumes because it took me about seven years of being at an assistant level role until I was able to break through to where I am now. Throughout those seven years, I was always the most educated person in the office. The first time I was in serious consideration for the job I have now, I didn't get it and the person who did had no prior experience and no advanced degree. The person who was hired was recommended by my bosses' close friend and ultimately was pretty terrible.

I have a pretty good idea what field you're talking about, and I can attest that it has its own set of problems.