This is an odd one. I was not planning to create a post about David Stern, but there is a voice inside of my head which screams “He needs to be talked about”and “Not enough people know about his greatness”. So, thereby, here I am, dedicating my day off to create an awareness of his legacy and how he has influenced the sport, which I hold dearest to my heart.

How did David Stern got to the NBA ?

David Stern was born on September 22, 1942 in a 3 children Jewish family and spent his early life in New Jersey, while being a big New York Knicks fan and a basketball enthusiast. After graduating high school, he pursued a Bachelor’s Degree in History and later on became a Doctor of Jurisprudence graduating from the prestigious Columbia University. Soon enough, David started working in the “Proskauer Rose” Law firm which is notoriously known for their expertise in sports law. In 1978, he joined the NBA to become the NBA General Counsel under the commissioner Larry O’Brien. By 1980, O’Brien promoted Stern to be the NBA’s executive vice president for business and legal affairs, which made Stern de facto in charge of marketing, television, and public relations for the league. He became a commissioner a commissioner on February 1st, 1984, just few months before Michel Jordan was drafted to the NBA.

His most nototious work

Introducing Drug testing policy

New York Times report in August 1980 suggested that 40 to 75 percent of NBA players used cocaine. David Stern tackled this issue by negotiating an anti-drug policy in 1983. Additionally, the NBA was the first Major American Sports league which started testing its player for Drugs.

Introducing Salary cap

Stern quickly realised that the teams, located in smaller markets have big disadvantage in terms of their financial capabilities.Thereby, before the 1984-1985 NBA Season, he introduced the 3.6.Million Dollar salary cap per team. This meant that the more earning teams would share revenue and every team would have fair chance on building a championship caliber team. Interestingly, in 2019-2020 NBA season, the Salary Cap is said to be $109M and the projection for 2020-2021 season is that the salary sap will rise to $118M. These numbers showcase how the product on NBA has grown, becoming not only a sports league, but a brand.

Branding and marketing of the NBA

Stern’s brilliance can be easily summarised by a quotes by Adam Silver “When I arrived at the league in the early ’90s, leagues weren’t considered brands the way they are now,” Mr. Silver told reporters in 2014. Mr. Stern, he said, was one of the first “to take modern state-of-the-art marketing practices, whatever the technology happened to be at the time, and apply them to sports leagues.”

More notorious achievements of David Stern include:

– globalising NBA and making it accessible around the world

– Establishing the Dream Team and introducing the world to the NBA in 1992 Olympics

-Initiating dress code change to make NBA more family friendly

-Bringing NBA to China with the help of Yao Ming and many more

Conclusion

Even thought there are critics over his style of leadership, short-temper and overall dictatorship like conduct, David Stern has to be remembered as one of the most influential basketball minds ever. In 1980’s, when NBA had drug problem, racial tension, he decided to take the job and turned NBA into an arguably best and most popular spots league ever. He did all that was necessary to grow the product, brand and was respected among the league. May he Rest In Peace.

Yes, I know, the title of this blog post is kind of clickbait and I don’t have any experience with parenting or coaching, but hear me out on this one. Obviously, this blog post will not lay a blueprint on how to raise an athlete nor do I strive to teach how to be a better parent (this for a 21-year-old kid would be pretty strange). My main goal of this blog post is to raise awareness of the word Specialisation in the context of the youth sports.

What is Specialisation ?

In general terms, Specialisation is a particular area of work, study or business which somebody spends more time on than on other areas (Oxford dictionary definition). In the context of this article, I will refer to a specialisation in sports, especially talking about adolescent athletes and the dangers within the early specialisation in one sport.

Why is this important ?

I remember being approximately 10 years old, just around the time when youtube came along and watching this video of a 5th grader doing all these crazy things with basketball, showcasing he’s crazy skills and abilities and thinking to myself, that I need to train more if I really want to achieve success in the sport. Years went by, my dream of playing professional basketball vanished and I am still thinking to this day, what was the point of doing so much work for the sport in which I honestly had no future in. Thankfully, the sport has defined who I am and shaped my into the person I am right now, but the story is not about me, it is about specialisation and how you should avoid it until a certain age.

Besides all that, recently, I have noticed that there is an incredible increase of commercialised training camps, individual coaches, skill schools and many more weird entities, which try to create an illusion that the 12-year old kids have to learn how to do the triple behind the back crossover with their eyes closed whilst juggling the tennis balls. It’s just absurd and I strongly advise any parent, which is considering paying some self-proclaimed basketball skills guru for individual training sessions for their kids, think twice and better spend that money on some fun activity with the kid like ice-skating. If my opinion is not enough, I would like to get to the main part of the article, which is scientific evidence.

Specialisation does not result in reaching elite levels in sport !

Before getting the injury risk part of the article, I want to address an important issue of specialisation in young athletes. There, literally, is in no evidence that early specialisation increases the chance of reaching elite levels in sport. An article “Early sport specialisation, does it lead to long-term problems? ” clearly states that delayed sports specialisation provides enhanced opportunities for youth development. Additionally, the authors suggest that besides the physical developments of participating in different sports, the psychological and social developments can be enhanced leading to more positive outcomes for youth overall development. Furthermore, the previously mentioned article is just one example that advocates the non-specialisation approach. By just typing in some keywords related to sports, specialisation, youth, etc. in Google Scholar you can come up with numerous articles debunking the myth of why early specialisation in sports is good for the youth.

The injury risk

My next point of why the early specialisation is bad for the youth development is increased injury risk. Many articles, including the Early Sport Specialization: Effectiveness and Risk of Injury in Professional Baseball Players and A Prospective Study on the Effect of Sport Specialization on Lower Extremity Injury Rates in High School Athletes state that athletes who underwent the early specialisation in sports at youth levels have higher risks of injuries later on in their professional careers. Furthermore, even the athletes themselves claim that early specialisation is not needed to reach the elite levels in sports. Additionally the previously mentioned claim is also statistically backed up by researches, who conclude the same.

P.S.

As this is not an actual research paper, and I am not required to reference this article correctly, I will not provide full APA referencing list. All cited articles are linked in the text and you can explore the topic more by reading them (if you click on them) and researching the topic of early specialisation in sports on your own !

As previously mentioned, this article is a follow up to my previous blog post-Female coaches in the NBA. Furthermore, as I carry on with my duty of emphasising the importance of diversity and inclusiveness in the world of sports, I wanted to re-assure that I am not an investigative journalist nor do I strive to be one. My main goal with these series is changing the view of those who think that female cannot be a manager of Real Madrid, cannot be a part of locker room, sports icon or any other way rank higher than heterosexual male.

England (Premier League)

-None. 

Yes, if you google female coaches in the premier league some articles pop up and the fact that Newcastle United’s Natalie Henderson and Swansea’s Nia Davies are coaching at the academy is worth mentioning. Additionally, on 26^th of April, 2019, during the press conference Chelsea Woman’s manager Emma Hayes mentioned that it is only  matter of time that there will be a female manager in the Premier league. Nearly a month later, Chelsea FC hired Frank Lampard to fill the vacancy of their manager position.  Regardless of optimism, I fear that there is no evidence that there could be an actual female manager in the Premier League in near future. In my opinion, firstly, we should see a female in the assistant coach position, but such thing hasn’t happened, at least in Premier League.

🗣 “I don’t think it will be long at all” ⏳@ChelseaFCW boss Emma Hayes believes it’s only a matter of time until female coaches are introduced to the men’s game… ⚽️🔝#CFCW 🔵

Full press conference 👉 https://t.co/LNalBDgX60 pic.twitter.com/SbJRemSXyv

— Hayters TV (@HaytersTV) April 26, 2019

Germany (Not Bundesliga)

As I was utilising my German skills during this research, an interesting name popped up and it turns out that there is a female manager in the German Football. It is Imke Wübbenhorst, the manager of BV Cloppenburg. Imke was appointed in the fall of 2018 and one year later, is still the coach and BV Cloppenburg  and holds 9^thposition from 17 team. The sad part of this story is the fact that her team is competing in the 6^th tier national league and we can only speculate how professionally the soccer is played there.

Spain, France, Netherlands, etc. 

Unfortunately, I could not find any data on the female coaches in any other powerhouses in the European Soccer. My assumption is that there should be some, at least in the grassroots or academy level, but there weren’t any publications on any of them.

Comparison with NBA

The list of Female coaches in European Soccer is rather short. In comparision, as mentioned in previous article, NBA has 11 female assistant coaches among 30 teams. While doing the research, I failed to even find 1 female coach at the top-flight clubs among the European Leagues. This trend of the European Soccer not adopting to the latest liberal standards continue among issues like racism, LGBTQ community rights, religion, etc. In my honest opinion, there is a massive issue with the European Soccer and the problems start at the organisational level (FIFA). Hopefully, this blogpost serves as a food for thought and we, as society start to notice the value and importance of diversity and inclusiveness.

During the first year of my bachelor’s in International Sports Management I had to face an assignment of writing a 3,000-word essay about Gender and Sexuality in Sport in the 21st Century. Diving deeper into scientific literature and exploring the topic really changed my mind and the conclusion was:

“As participation numbers continue to grow, sport still remains male centred, dominant and organized.” 

and 

“Although, sport still remains sex segregated, this literature review outlines the positive changes in 21^st century regarding equality. Positive changes include increase in female participation, more positive attitudes and inclusion for LGB community individual’s in sport.”

Basically, in few words, my conclusion was that we don’t have an equality in sports, but the things are slowly changing, and the things are becoming better, but a lot of the work has to be done before we can talk about true inclusiveness and equality. 

A few things have changed, but the general idea, which is mentioned in my conclusion has remained the same. Thereby, this blog post is created as tool for my future comparison of sexual segregation in different sports. Furthermore, I want to emphasise the great job done by NBA and their willingness to create more diverse environment in the game, whilst the soccer is failing to adapt to this idea. 

Time for listing the female coaches in the NBA

And yeah, I know that these are only assistant coaches, but I truly hope that we will see either a Head Coach or a president of basketball operations in the NBA. My biggest hope right now is San Antonio Spurs assistant Becky Hammon, which has already rocked up some accolades by leading the Spurs Summer League team to championship and while San Antonio Spurs coaching legend Greg Popovich is approaching retirement, anything can happen. Additionally, this 2019-2020 is historically bad for the Spurs and NBA analysts are speculating that Pop would not be a part of the rebuild and approving Becky Hammon as a Head Coach would be an amazing farewell gift to the world of sports.

List of All Current NBA female assistant coaches:

Jenny Boucek	Dallas Mavericks
Brittni Donaldson	Toronto Raptors
Lindsay Gottlieb	Cleveland Cavaliers
Becky Hammon	San Antonio Spurs
Lindsey Harding	Philadelphia 76ers
Niele Ivey	Memphis Grizzlies
Kara Lawson	Boston Celtics
Natalie Nakase	LA Clippers
Kristi Toliver	Washington Wizards
Karen Stack Umlauf	Chicago Bulls
Teresa Weatherspoon	New Orleans Pelicans

Source: https://in.nba.com/news/list-of-female-assistant-coaches-in-the-nba/1wkuju9kshzsi1oobdyhld7ymn

Why did I choose to outline Kristi Toliver of Washington Wizards?

Kristi Toliver has a slightly different story as everyone else on this list. All of the other coaches mostly have been a WNBA players at some point, then hanged around the NBA franchises as data analysts, working in administrative staff, working as commentators or even coaching at the college level. Unlike all others, who are currently retired basketball players, Kristi is still active as an WNBA player for the Washington Mystics and decided to pursue the coaching job, while most of the other WNBA players are playing in Europe after the WNBA season. I find this incredibly inspiring and I hope that more NBA franchises give opportunities WNBA players to work in the NBA as a substitute to going to Europe and competing there. I will not go into the absurdness of the WNBA and female basketball in general, because this blog post would turn into an essay, but the fact that WNBA players play the whole summer in US and then go straight to the Europe, because WNBA does not pay very well. Pay issue, as well as having basically no break from playing basketball is utterly absurd, but unfortunately, I do not have a solution to propose, thereby, I will not go too much into this topic.

Conclusion

I am incredibly proud of NBA and their willingness to change the way we views sports and move towards equality. Some might argue that this number is too low, but the changes are happening, starting from 2018, the number of female Assistant coaches in NBA, has raised from 2 to 11. This is a big jump and, I we all must hope that 2020-2021 season will bring more females not only in the assistant coach position, but in every single department.

P.S This Blog post is a first part of my duty of highlighting how basketball is moving in the right direction, while Soccer, especially in Europe is falling behind.(Especially from the female staff perspective).