The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) in the UCF College of Business Administration (#UCFBusiness) has released the latest edition of the National Basketball Association (NBA) Racial and Gender Report Card, which covers the league’s diversity hiring for the 2014-2015 season. The report gave the NBA an A overall – A+ for racial hiring practices in men’s sports, and B+ for gender hiring in men’s sports.
The NBA’s score was the best in all of men’s professional sports.
“No other men’s league reaches the same points for race, gender or the combined score,” said Richard Lapchick, Ph.D., director of TIDES and the primary author of the report. “The NBA remains the industry leader among men’s sports for racial hiring practices.”
In the report, Lapchick goes on to point out, “While they did well overall for gender, especially the league office, women were still not well represented at the senior team levels and attention needs to be paid there. But overall, the NBA more than understands that diversity and inclusion are business imperatives.”
The full report can be read on tidesport.org.
TIDES is a part of the UCF College of Business DeVos Sport Business Management program, which was recently named as one of the top two sport management master’s degree programs in the world by SportBusiness International magazine. TIDES serves as a comprehensive resource of issues related to gender and race in amateur, collegiate and professional sports. The Racial and Gender Report Card indicates areas of improvement, stagnation and regression in the racial and gender composition of professional and college sports personnel and contributes to the improvement of integration in front office and college athletics department positions.