Opinion: Trail Blazers and Mavericks turn back the misogyny clock with coaching hires

Over the weekend, the NBA stepped back in time about 60 years to send a message that one would have thought would be unacceptable in the 21st century: 

If you want to be a head coach in the league, it’s better to have admitted to hitting a woman or to have allegedly sexually assaulted a woman than to actually be a woman.

On Friday, the Dallas Mavericks reached an agreement with Jason Kidd, Paste BN Sports reported. The next day, the Portland Trail Blazers and Chauncey Billups were finalizing a deal that would make Billups their next head coach.

These two are well-known NBA names, having been All-Stars multiple times in their careers. Kidd previously was the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks. Billups has never been a head coach anywhere in the game and only became an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers this season.

There’s more to their bios than that.

Kidd, 48, was arrested in January 2001 after his wife told police he hit her during an argument over their 2-year-old son. Kidd pleaded guilty to spousal abuse, was fined $200 and ordered to take anger management classes for six months.

He also pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated in 2012 after police said his vehicle struck a telephone pole. 

Billups, 44, settled a civil case after a 1997 incident in which a woman said that Billups and his former teammate Ron Mercer raped her. Criminal charges were never filed, but police reports stated that a rape kit examination of the victim showed injuries consistent with sexual assault. 

Sitting on the sidelines, watching men with these shameful backgrounds get these plum jobs, was Becky Hammon, the well-known San Antonio Spurs assistant who was a finalist for the Trail Blazers job, as well as Dawn Staley, Kara Lawson and all kinds of male candidates who presumably haven’t allegedly raped a woman or admitted to hitting a woman.

Hammon, 44, is still waiting to make history as the first woman to become a head coach of an NBA team. She was previously considered for the head coaching jobs with the Milwaukee Bucks and Indiana Pacers but was passed over despite her seven seasons of coaching experience in the league. 

If the tables had been turned, if she had been named over Billups and his awful baggage, can you imagine the celebration in Portland? Can you imagine the celebration throughout the NBA? 

Instead, the internet has blown up on the Trail Blazers, leaving them in full damage control, all because they picked the wrong person. 

And the Mavericks? My goodness. In 2018, a Sports Illustrated investigation uncovered “a corporate culture rife with misogyny and predatory sexual behavior.” 

Obviously, Kidd fits right in.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban tearfully vowed to do something about that awful culture he oversaw for years. One would have thought he meant that. One would have thought that would have meant Kidd was off the table the moment someone mentioned his name.

One also would have thought that no NBA team, not the Mavericks, not the Trail Blazers, not any of them, could have picked either Kidd or Billups in current-day America.

We now know how wrong that thinking is. 

What an indictment it is of today’s NBA to realize that instead of shunning these men, the league couldn’t wait to embrace them, endorse them and elevate them.