|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
After the growing backlash to DEI, the Cleveland Cavaliers told NBC News that while other organizations may be moving on, the NBA team was sticking with the racist program.
In 2023, Cavaliers CEO Nic Barlage vowed to tie DEI metrics to bonuses and make sure that DEI would be “organically woven within the DNA of your culture.”
“It is just how we go about things,” said Kevin Clayton, the Cavs’ chief DEI officer, who, like most equity bureaucrats, is black, explained. “We believe that everybody in our organization, every person in our community, is part of our diversity, equity and inclusion story.”
What does that actually mean? According to their DEI website, the Cavs promise that “our team members at all levels mirror the demographics of the communities that we live and work in.”
The Cavs have 13 out of 17 black players making for a 76% black team in a half black city.
45.8% of Cleveland is black, 36% is white and 13% is Latino. To truly “mirror the demographics” of Cleveland, the Cavs will need to make some adjustments. The current number of 13 black players will have to be cut to 7.6 with a multiracial player like Ty Jerome serving as the ‘half’.
The Cleveland Cavaliers will have to get rid of 5 black players to make way for 2 new white players, 2 new Latino players and one part Asian/Indian/Eskimo player, and only then will they properly reflect the diversity of Cleveland and showcase the Cavs’ commitment to DEI.
More problematically, of the top 5 highest paid Cavs players, only 1 is white, and only 2 of the top 10, a state of affairs that would set off an outcry in most professions if it were reversed.
I contacted the Cavaliers about whether they had any plans to reshuffle their team roster in keeping with their DEI quotas they claim to live by without expecting an answer. 76% black representation concentrated at the highest salary tiers in an organization trying to ‘diversify’ lower-paying tiers where there are white employees and suppliers is not seen as an issue.
And that’s true for the entire NBA.
The NBA’s DEI office claims that its mission is “focused on ensuring that the NBA continues to have a diverse, equitable and inclusive mix of talent at all levels globally.”
“At all levels” is an interesting contention for an organization with 70% black players.
America, unlike Cleveland and the NBA, is 58% white, 13% black, 19% Latino, and 6% Asian.
To be in compliance with its DEI mandate, NBA teams will collectively need to jettison about 300 black players and hire around 200 white players to make black NBA players a minority and white players a majority. It will also have to bring in 90 Latino players not to mention Asian ones.
That would be absurd and yet such diversity quotas which prioritize race over merit abound. And the NBA and many of its teams have committed to those quotas at every other level except the one that is the most visible and the one that actually matters to the bottom line.
The NBA wants diversity everywhere but in the hands that dribble the ball. Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks brag of having an executive leadership team that is “47% people of color”. The NBA claims that the fact that over half of its coaches are black is an achievement in diversity even though that level of racial disparity is at odds with both national and most local demographics.
DEI doesn’t actually seek equity let alone diversity. The profession of DEI tends to be every bit as diverse as the NBA’s team rosters and the NBA’s DEI professionals are no different. But the difference is that the NBA’s team rosters reward talent while DEI only rewards race.
Putting any metric ahead of performance on the court would lead to easily observable failure while DEI thrives by burying the failures of diversity inside large organizations where responsibility is harder to assign. DEI hires drag down every place they are in because of the simple fact that they were hired for reasons other than the only ones that matter in a workplace.
And that’s why the NBA deserves the DEI that it’s been forcing on everyone else from its front office workers and its suppliers to the cities that its team shake down to the country as a whole.
The NBA would be the perfect opportunity to showcase DEI in action.
Every NBA team should be forced to have a majority of white players who are only there because of the color of their skin. And their black colleagues should have to prop up these DEI hires while watching them get paid inflated salaries and listening to their victimhood stories.
DEI counselors should warn black players that complaining about them is racist. Players and fans should have to listen to the story of how white men have been kept down in the NBA since the 1970s retold over and over again in documentaries and sessions by diversity advocates.
Basketball fans should have to watch as averages drop and diversity players blow game after game while no one is allowed to mention the drastic decline in ability and performance.
The NBA has told us that it wants to set a DEI example for America. This is its opportunity to show everyone just how DEI works in the real world so that we never have to live with it again.
To be fair,
black felons are highly skilled at playing children’s games.
And,
anyone who wants to watch black supremacist felons playing children’s games
gets what they deserve.
I don’t watch any sports besides a rare tennis championship or boxing match but I don’t hate sports. I do hate basketball, though. What an inane game.
One of the last sporting events I played in was midnight basketball back in high school during the 1960s. Most of the players were black kids, they were amazing at fast break basketball, it was amazing watching them as they ran by me and around me 🙂
And the Cavs don’t have a short, balding, over weight, old white guy like me. Plus I suck at basketball. That would be true diversity in action. And it wouldn’t be pretty.
They could put this old guy on the bench as a token and not play me for just 200k.
Yeah, they might grab your head by accident thinking it was the basketball. 🙂
The least NBA Basketball could do.to possibly make the game more interesting, is to disallow dunking. Chamberlain dunked some, but he had a pretty neat hand finger roll shot. Willis Reed could dunk, but mostly the lefty was money in the key. Dave Downs could, but he also had a great shot in the perimeter.
That should be Dave Cowens, not Downs.
What’s wrong with dunking? Michael Jordan was graceful when he did it. That was the only thing I ever liked about boogieball.
I have basketball in my blood.
I always dribble before I shoot.
Then there’s the WNBA with a bunch of Black Supremacists who just couldn’t handle any Diversity when a Whitey outplayed them! They tried hard to physically take her out with blatant violent fouls and who should have been ejected, fined, and even kicked out of the league!
When CAITLYN CLARK’S name came up and was about to break a record while still playing college ball, I just had to see that and then…. “HOLY SHITT…. SHE’S WHITE?” I was impressed as millions of Americans were… EXCEPT FOR BLACK SUPREMACISTS who just couldn’t stand a Whitey taking over the game, sold out venues, and televised records.
The Olympic team just couldn’t have her either but could take an Anti-American Black Supremacist who was in a Russian prison and later traded for the biggest arms dealer in the world. For the first time ever, I cheered for the other team when the Lesbian Soccer player was so disrespectful to our country and Flag, and now this time, I also cheered for the other basketball team to win!
If she was Black and still playing that way… I’D STILL BE WATCHING HER like I watched Michael Jordan.
FAA style DEI in the NBA would include very short people and baskets lowered so that they don’t have to jump and the remaining tall players would have to bend down. There would be crashes. Players would need black boxes.
That’s very funny!
Maybe people should stop attending their Games as well forcing DEI upon them
“The NBA needs to fire hundreds of black players and hire hundreds of white ones.”
Good one.
Same thing needs to happen for the nursing profession, education and HR because they are almost exclusively women.
Which is why all those professions do such lousy and corrupt work.
My first reaction to the title of this article was… “Oh my gawwwddd. Daniel went there”
This line of reasoning has been spoken of for years, but always blown off as too stupid to deal with. Then the Marxists came to town.
And as the DOGE team has been skillfully unmasking, DEI is merely the ugly scab covering a long-festering, foul smelling and metastasizing infection. Not “gov’t bloat” but a true cancer.
And that’s why I had to make the analogy that this new administration is re-living ancient Greek mythology.
Of the 12 Labors of Hercules, one was that of fighting the undefeatable 9-headed Hydra, the serpent-like creature that slithered out of Lake Lerna. Take the time to visualize that allusion. For every head that our hero chopped off, two would grow back. Sorta like bureaucracy. Until Hercules figured out to immediately cauterize the wound on the creature to stop this form of metastasis.
But Hercules needed help from his nephew to wield the torch that seared the beast’s wounds. And that nephew is DOGE.
And indeed, this goal of beating the unbeatable will require a true Herculean effort.
That’s a good analogy, it is like the labor of Hercules.
Per these guys, a black coaching staff with an all black team and an all black front office is the ultimate in diversity.
HEY DANIEL…. “AND HISPANIC ONES!” COME ON MAN!
Lebron is called into the office. Boss: “Lebron, glad to see you. Have some news. I know you champion DEI and even Black Supremacy and we are now implementing our own DEI agenda. Therefore, we have to let you go to replace you for a Diversity Hire. This player, Steve Chavez, was the best shooter ever in his high school days and could hit baskets way beyond the three-point line. Hook shots from out there too. He was also the Best Bench Warmer ever since, yes, he could make the points, but the guy didn’t know how to dribble since he always played by himself. But we have to add a few Hispanics so we’re replacing you with him. It doesn’t matter that he’s only 5’7″, over two-hundred pounds, close to seventy, I’m sure you’re okay with it.”
Lebron: “HEY… he needs to try out like everybody else and the best man wins. He definitely won’t make the cut!
Boss: “It doesn’t matter. It’s all about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. You’re so vocal about it so now I don’t see what your problem is. You should be proud that you’re willingly giving up your position to be a part of the DEI agenda. Also, if you don’t give it up for an Hispanic…. YOU’RE A RACIST! Now OUT! OH WAIT… ADIOS AMIGO!”
I’ve been calling for DEI in college ball and the NBA.
BUT, as a screenwriter, I wrote one: “BOOKS NOT BASKETBALLS!” Too many of our youth only focus on sports. They’re good in HS but only the smallest percentage make it to College…. not only for their lack of talent, but they can barely read and write. The ones that do make it to college, many times by corruption, including from the professors, they’re still not good enough to make the Pros, but they want that pampered life, the hotels, airplanes, the best foods, and now nothing so they don’t have a degree to fall back on so they resort to the Get Rich Quick scams and they turn into DRUG DEALERS AND OTHER CRIMES.
These drop-outs also have to live in the city where they are “famous”. “Don’t you know who I am?” They still want to be a Somebody. If they leave, they are a Nobody!
BOOKS NOT BASKETBALLS!
And allow men to compete in women’s Tennis.
But how to bring DEI to the Math and Science Olympiads, that is the question.
And chess.
As S.T.E.M. courses are like holy water to a vampire, the flaming DEI losers will have to decline any such Olympic venue.
It’s just not their thing. But “outcome-based math” has been tried often; with the unsurprising, embarrassing results.
Yes, and spelling bees.
And history and even English.
The NBA is really the CBA, Chinese Basketball Association. It should move its HQ to Beijing.
Hilarious. Skewering of this culture marxist pomposity. kudos ..
Diversity is just a one-way street — always against Caucasians. Always.
DEI is defined by division. Categorizing, labeling and creating a contrived hierarchy. It destroys unit morale and teamwork. And if it destroys excellence, the Marxists like it.
Women are ~1/2 the area and the country. Shouldn’t they be 1/2 the NBA teams?!
I laughed out loud just reading the title of your article.
Funny how DEI seems primarily interested in the equity for only one group.
It would be a very interesting conversation for successful Black athletes to be terminated to make room for lessor qualified players of other ethnic backgrounds.
Apparently, much of DEI is nothing more than a cover for Black racism against others!!
Oops…did I say that out loud?
Another troubling reality is the impact of DEI in selecting students to study medicine to become doctors. At UCLA over 50% of medical students cannot pass basic tests diagnosing in multiple areas of medicine. Truly frightening! And there are plenty of highly intelligent students who lost the opportunity to make room for students without the GPA or MCAT scores that are necessary.
It’s one thing for basketball, baseball, football and hockey and a whole other ball game when it’s medicine and air traffic control, engineering, architecture and other professions necessitating excellence in order for them to have the demanded skill sets to execute those responsibilities properly.
According to NAEP data sets in an article from The Hill 80–85% of Black students cannot do fundamental math and many are functionally illiterate. Passing these students along instead of them learning how to read, write and do math is yet again the horrific influence of making them victims and keeping them from reaching their potential..
My grandson, who just had his 11th birthday in December, has been assessed at a reading/comprehension level of an 11th grade student. Should all the time, energy and effort made by his parents and family toward his education be penalized to allow someone completely unqualified to take away his earned opportunity?
DEI keeps the poorly educated and unprepared for life as an adult on the same plantation and Black parents need to take their cues from parents like Dr. Ben Carson’s mom. She was illiterate, cleaned houses for a living as a single parent in the projects and during the summer her boys spent their time at the local library reading and she required that they write her book reports about what they had read. The results speak loudly of her love, discipline and commitment to her two sons; and for each of then the sky was the limit!
FOrget the whites, where are the Asians in the NBA?
There’s an EASY FIX to this mess – hire who you WANT to hire and tell everyone else to just SHUT UP! Now if that means there will be very few black doctors, nurses, bank tellers, bank managers, Gov’t officials, auto workers, teachers then so be it! You either DISCRIMINATE based on skin tone rather than ABILITY or you DON’T! Can’t have it both ways as the nba desires and quite frankly about ANY communistic DEMOcrat organization! There’s the “Rooney Rule” in the nfl that REQUIRES teams to interview black candidates where’s the rule for the nba to interview WHITE candidates?
An even EASIER FIX is to just not support it in any way – I don’t – nfl either since they turned Anti-America with their support of kapadick and trashing our National Anthem and their even trashier half-time “shows”! But then they play to their audience – just like GOLF has a tradition of HONOR, RESPECT, and DECENCY.
I have no issue with playing the other song, but calling it the Black National Anthem is entirely RACIST since the NATIONAL ANTHEM is for ALL AMERICANS – white, black, brown, red, khaki, or even albinoes!
Here’s a tough one: name any winner of a WNBA Dunk Contest. No word yet if anyone is suing the WNBA for the “disparate impact” the 10 foot height of the basket is having.
Name a white corner back in the NFL?
Like Nike says, ‘Just do it’!