Statistics for the games on Monday evening.
.402
Tuesday was a full year for Leon Rose as team president of the Knicks. The Knicks are 18-17, better than many pundits predicted, but the story against Rose is foreboding: this is season 20 of James L. Dolan’s possession that the Knicks are 661-982 – which leads to it the lowest profit share in the league in this period of time at .402.
3
The top three regular season win percentages during Dolan’s reign belong to the three Texas teams: San Antonio’s .688 (1,131-512), Dallas’s .599 (988-662), and Houston’s .576 (949-698).
19.8
When the Knicks selected Obi Toppin with the number 8 in the November draft, Toppin was billed as a potential successor to Julius Randle on the forecourt. Instead, Randle, who at $ 19.8 million has a very friendly team option for next season, will play in his first All-Star game on Sunday. Without warning, Randle has emerged as the offensive lynchpin for coach Tom Thibodeau, who comes closest to a marquee signing the Knicks made in the off-season.
5
Former Knicks team president Dave Checketts will join Burnley’s board of directors in June, making it the fifth club in the English Premier League club with 20 teams and an owner-level NBA affiliation. Arsenal is owned by Stan Kroenke, whose son Josh is the governor and team president of the Denver Nuggets and also serves on the Arsenal board of directors. Aston Villa is jointly owned by Wes Edens, a major owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. Crystal Palace is owned by the Philadelphia 76ers duo of Josh Harris and David Blitzer. And Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James has been a minority owner of Liverpool since 2011.
16
The diversity of the overall landscape of the NBA has remained largely unchanged over the past nine days after changing coaches in Minnesota and Atlanta. Of the top 60 positions in the league, only 16 are held by non-white coaches and heads of the front offices.
With an estimated player pool of more than 75 percent black, the league has only seven black head coaches. Nate McMillan has replaced displaced Lloyd Pierce in Atlanta as the Hawks’ interim coach and joined Cleveland’s JB Bickerstaff, Detroit’s Dwane Casey, Houston’s Stephen Silas, Philadelphia’s Doc Rivers, Phoenix Monty Williams and Tyronn Lue of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Charlotte’s James Borrego, who is Mexican, and Miami’s Erik Spoelstra, who is Filipino-American, are the league’s other two color coaches.
The six black executives with leadership skills in the front office are Cleveland’s Koby Altman, Detroit’s Troy Weaver, Houston’s Rafael Stone, Phoenix’s James Jones, San Antonio’s Brian Wright, and Toronto’s Masai Ujiri. Minnesota’s Gersson Rosas was the first Latino in league history to direct a team’s basketball operations.
Rosas hired Chris Finch, who is white and worked with him in Houston, to replace Ryan Saunders as Timberwolves head coach on Feb.22, rather than promoting David Vanterpool, who is black, from the inside out or a broader quest to be commissioned. In the front office, Rosas has hired two Native Americans, Sachin Gupta and Robby Sikka, and Joe Branch, a former black player agent.
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