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NFL

Thursday, December 30
Skiles, Hollins and the state of race relations

By David Aldridge
Special to ESPN.com

Two NBA jobs were filled last week.
Lionel Hollins
Lionel Hollins gestures to his players during his first win as head coach.

One coach got the team with the four former and current all-stars, the team that spends millions annually on top-notch talent, the one whose owner went to great pains to say that he, the coach, should not be referred to under any circumstances as "interim."

The other coach got the team with, um, no all-stars. With no history of paying big-ticket free agents. With, ah, no owner at the moment. No one referred to him as anything but interim.

One coach is white.

The other is black.

Guess who got what team?

Of course, Scott Skiles got the Phoenix job, while Lionel Hollins got the Vancouver job. This happens over and over again in my NBA. Black assistant coaches, when they do get jobs, normally get the dregs. While white assistants get set up with the pick of the litter. It happens far too often. I certainly don't think there's a conspiracy going on -- no clandestine whites-only get-togethers at the league meetings or anything. But I wonder why it turns out like this all the time.

There is no empirical evidence to support my theory. Only history, which can be explained away, massaged, spun. I am not talking about established coaches like Larry Brown and Lenny Wilkens and Phil Jackson, who can take whatever jobs they want. I am talking about the assistants, who comprise the pool from which the vast majority of coaches are chosen.

Some of you will no doubt point out that Paul Silas is in charge in Charlotte. That Butch Carter is in control in Toronto. No doubt, both have young, exciting, winning teams. But it weren't always so. When Butch Carter was named interim coach (that word again!) for the Raptors two years ago, the jury was still out on Tracy McGrady. Marcus Camby was getting injured every other day. And Vince Carter was still in Chapel Hill. Kenny Anderson was refusing to go to Toronto as if it were, say, Phnom Penh.

It was not a plum assignment.

When Silas took over for Dave Cowens last year, the Hornets were 4-11. Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell were stewing 3,000 miles away. Anthony Mason was in street clothes. Glen Rice was rehabbing. Derrick Coleman was overweight. But GM Bob Bass was able to bring Jones and Campbell east. Mason got healthy. DC is still overweight. (But he's working on it.) Silas rallied the players and almost got the Bugs in the playoffs last season.

It is very rare that an Alvin Gentry gets more than half a season to prove himself in Detroit. With help, Silas and Butch Carter made something of awful jobs. It doesn't always turn out that way. It rarely turns out that way. Rarer still that a Doc Rivers can come out of the TV booth. (Although, handed a perfectly awful roster in Orlando, Rivers is performing miracles.)

That's part of the reason why Darrell Walker (Toronto) and Butch Beard (New Jersey) and Jim Cleamons (Dallas) and Don Chaney (Houston, Detroit) and Quinn Buckner (Dallas) and Bernie Bickerstaff (Seattle, Denver) and M.L. Carr (Boston) and Johnny Davis (Philadelphia) and Sidney Lowe (Minnesota) and John Lucas (San Antonio, Philadelphia) and Bob Lanier (Golden State) and Eddie Jordan (Sacramento) aren't running teams anymore.

Of those coaches, only Bickerstaff and Beard came to teams that had a winning record. (Bickerstaff replaced Dan Issel with the Nuggets 18-16 in 1994. Beard was named head coach of the Nets when Chuck Daly resigned in the off-season, coming off a 45-37 mark the year before.)

You may think I'm absolving black assistants of any responsibility when their teams fail. Far from it. I tell Cleamons every time I see him that he made a mistake giving up on Jason Kidd so soon. If he hadn't, they would both still be in Dallas. I suspect the ratio of dumb things done and said by black coaches is comparable to that of white coaches.

It is a subject about which everyone is edgy. White assistants certainly don't think they get any preferential treatment. Black assistants think it hurts them to be associated with racial discussions. The league points to its record in hiring African-American coaches and says, rightly, that it's doing a heck of a lot more than the other sports leagues.

But the facts remain. Look at Phoenix. When Danny Ainge resigned, the Suns had two veteran assistants on their bench: Skiles and Frank Johnson. Skiles is an ex-point guard. Johnson is an ex-point guard. Skiles is a former first-round pick. Johnson is a former first-round pick. Skiles has a great feel for the game. Johnson has a great feel for the game. Skiles has been an assistant for three years, Johnson, for four.

The one significant difference in their resumes is that Skiles was the head coach for PAOK, a high-level team in Greece, for one season. But when Skiles got to Phoenix, he became Ainge's top assistant, just as Ainge, as soon as he arrived from doing TNT games, became Cotton Fitzsimmons's top assistant.

Top assistants get groomed for head coaching jobs. And when African-Americans are top assistants, it's usually because the head coach is African-American. Gar Heard was Gentry's number one assistant in Detroit last season, for example. (To be fair, though, he was also Larry Brown's top assistant in Indiana and Philly.)

Let me stop right here. I know both Jerry and Bryan Colangelo, the father-son duo that run the Suns. If I for one second thought either had any prejudicial bones in their bodies, I'd tell you. But I don't. Emphatically do not. This isn't about racism, however; it's about perception. Some coaches are perceived to be head coaching material, some are not. Clearly, Skiles was thought of as having the goods. Johnson wasn't. Because one is white and the other black doesn't mean that that decision was racist. But it seems like that's always the decision.

I know there are many white assistants who only get one shot. Bill Blair in Minnesota. Brian Winters in Vancouver. Brendan Malone in Toronto. Bill Hanzlik in Denver. And a lot of assistants, white and black, get no shot. (Sure would like to see Larry Drew, now in Detroit, and Terry Stotts, now in Milwaukee, get a chance.) Like I said, this isn't scientific. It's a visceral, gut feeling.

And progress is coming. It is an African-American general manager, Stu Jackson, who's giving Hollins the chance in Vancouver, just as another, Wes Unseld, is giving Heard his shot in Washington. More minorities in the decision-making pipeline should mean more opportunities. In situations that can realistically result in either failure or success.

I think that's all anyone is asking for.

Don't blame 'Reef
Grizzlies' decision to fire Brian Hill was centered on the play of Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The forward wasn't producing at his normal close-to All-Star levels the first month of the season. Mike Bibby's game also appeared to be struggling. Vancouver was losing in the guts of games at an alarmingly frequent rate. Abdur-Rahim had told friends he wanted to judge Hill on his own and not listen to the horror stories coming from others. He did.

	ALDRIDGE'S RANKINGS
	THE TOP 10 1. L.A. Lakers 2. Portland 3. Charlotte 4. Miami 5. San Antonio 6. Utah 7. Indiana 8. Seattle 9. Phoenix 10. Toronto THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. L.A. Clippers 26. New Jersey 27. Golden State 28. Vancouver 29. Chicago

But this wasn't a Penny Hardaway, mutiny deal on Abdur-Rahim's part. There was no meeting or ultimatum. It was more like the Grant Hill situation with Doug Collins in Detroit, where it became apparent to all that the only way to keep Hill from getting permanently down in the daubers was to do something about his coach. Call it an intervention on management's part.

I believe this because Abdur-Rahim called me this week to make sure that I wasn't trying to tar him with the Penny Brush. I believe he was sincere because everyone who's ever played with or coached the young man has nothing but the best things to say about him. He loves to play and comes to play every night.

And there's plenty of time for him to become cynical, jaded and power-mad.

Around The League

Raptors insisting they won't part with Doug Christie and Michael Stewart for Kendall Gill. Christie has become more and more valuable, and at $2.7 million this year, he's as inexpensive a starter as they come. And the potential Tracy McGrady-Larry Hughes deal fell apart not because of a first-round pick, but when the Sixers kept trying to inject one of their high-priced big men -- Tyrone Hill or Theo Ratliff -- in the deal. Raptors trying to keep the decks clear for either Glen Rice this year or Grant Hill next summer.

Jerry Stackhouse is having his best season in scoring (22 per), rebounding and assists (4.7 apiece). "I went to him in the offseason," Coach Alvin Gentry said. "I said 'I want you here. I think you are a helluva player.'" But I think he was pressing last year because of Joe (Dumars). I told him, "'every night, you're gonna be out there 35 minutes'"

Bucks are getting production out of heretofore forgotten Scott Williams at center. With Robert Traylor buried in George Karl's doghouse, Williams has been starting most of the month and putting up solid numbers. "He's been healthy all season," says GM Ernie Grunfeld, which is new for Williams; he's been plagued by shoulder problems the last several years as he rusted on the bench in Philadelphia.

Happy. Merry.


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