Jalen Rose is one of America’s most prolific and outspoken sports commentators. A member of the University of Michigan’s legendary Fab Five team in the early nineties, Rose went on to the N.B.A., where he played for the Indiana Pacers and the Chicago Bulls. Since retiring as a player, in 2007, he has been a fixture on ESPN, in recent years co-hosting “Jalen & Jacoby,” a national sports-radio show, with the commentator David Jacoby. Rose is also a writer and podcast host for the New York Post, and the co-founder of a charter school, the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, in his home town of Detroit.
I spoke by phone with Rose on June 28th, while he was in Phoenix covering the conference finals. We talked about the problems facing the N.B.A., as it finishes a season that was delayed by the pandemic, leaving players with less time off between games and pushing the N.B.A. Finals into July. Many of the league’s all-star players have been injured, raising questions about whether the shortened schedule is to blame. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also considered why the N.B.A. hasn’t had more Black coaches, whether the league actually cares about social justice, and why so few pro athletes have come out of the closet.
What have you made of these playoffs so far? Do you think that the number of injuries suggests that the league needs to do something different?
Not at all. These have been a couple of unique seasons in N.B.A. history, based on the pandemic. Last season ended with the teams playing in the bubble. It culminated in the Lakers winning the championship without fans in the stands. This season, you start later, and in order to complete the season, you have got to jump some big hurdles, and have some challenges to overcome. The more you play, obviously it exposes you to injury, and I can’t act like playing a compressed schedule doesn’t affect players’ health. But, at the same time, I don’t think it’s the main contributing factor to a lot of the injuries that we saw.
LeBron James tweeted that the league needed to be more aware of what the shortened schedule meant for players and their health. But, at the same time, the players agreed to this schedule, right?
Correct, and this was a necessary evil. The N.B.A. has done a terrific job over the decades of trying to make sure that there’s a legitimate champion. So seventy-two games [the number the league committed to playing] gets you more teams that are in contention now. If you look at the landscape of the current playoffs, of each of the teams, none of them have won a championship since the merger [of the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association, in 1976], and a couple of them haven’t won it in the history of their franchises. That’s great for the game.
Three of the four coaches of the conference finals teams are Black, which has never happened before. We’ve already seen some teams like the Blazers and the Mavericks hire Black coaches for next season. Why did this take so long?
To drill down a little bit further, each of them are former players. People for so very long dismissed the on-job experience of the former player and, when they went for the job, spoke about them like they were inexperienced. There isn’t more experience than playing.
What has happened is that ownership and general managers have now realized, with guys on the back half of the roster, you’re coaching those players, you’re trying to get those players to improve, you’re trying to get them to fit into a role. But your superstars—those are your partners. When I see Aaron Rodgers not seeing eye to eye with the Green Bay Packers, the first thing that comes to my mind is: that’s your partner. You should find a way to make it work with him. So that’s the same thing I now see in the N.B.A. Look at what Deandre Ayton is saying about [the Suns coach and former player] Monty Williams. He’s talking about a guy that challenges him in a different way. That’s something that you get from just being a player, because we understand the difference between a pat on the back and a kick in the butt.
This idea that a player isn’t necessarily best equipped to be a coach—do you think that was just an excuse not to hire Black coaches?
It’s an opportunity to dilute the talent pool, and take a former player and just dismiss the fact that he’s been a player and say, “Well, he has no coaching experience.” Now, all playing experiences aren’t created equal. If you’ve ever played basketball, and the team chose you to be a captain, that’s a leadership position.
Is there something that makes a former player a good coach? I would assume that really smart players, like Chris Paul or LeBron or Steve Nash, would be best.
So here’s what’s different about the N.B.A., and I love this so very much. It’s always been a league that understood that players drive the league. Look at the logos for the National Hockey League, for football. Football is a shield, and basketball is a player, Jerry West. Jerry West not only is Mr. Clutch but he’s probably one of the greatest executives of all time. So the players you just mentioned—what do they have in common? They’re all great communicators, each of them has shown leadership qualities, each of them has been able to reinvent themselves. Lastly, every time they’ve been a part of a team, they have either been one of the best guys or the spokesperson.
But then you have guys like Nate McMillan and Tyronn Lue, who are coaching in the semifinals now but who were not the stars of their team.
I fall into their category. Because the first guys that you just talked about, those are superstars, and you see them coming. But who the world doesn’t see coming, people within the league see coming. One thing about playing for multiple teams is that you get to meet more people, you get familiar with more cities, you get to play for more coaches, you get to learn from a lot more people. So if you look at Tyronn Lue’s playing career, you’ll say he played for these teams, averaged this amount of points or whatever. But then you probably would ignore that, wow, he played for Phil Jackson. Oh, he coached with Doc Rivers. You start looking back at the lineage of who he’s been around.
Last week, Damian Lillard, the Blazers All-Star guard, got into arguments on Twitter with people who were upset that the Blazers were hiring Chauncey Billups, who had been accused of sexual assault twenty-four years ago, as head coach. Some people were also upset that Jason Kidd was hired to coach the Mavericks, because Kidd pleaded guilty to charges of domestic abuse, in 2001. The N.B.A. has said that it was going to try and have different standards around social issues than other leagues. How do you think they should be thinking about issues like this?
So each situation, obviously, is different, and all of the circumstances are extremely important. I don’t treat them lightly, as none of us will or should. This has happened since the beginning of time. What Isaac did five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago—when is it O.K. for him to move on with his life? That’s always a juggle that we’re going to have as a society, because there are no perfect human beings. So each of us can have somebody come out and say, “Hey, Isaac said this in high school. He did this in college,” or whatever. Obviously, it’s not to the severity of the things that those guys got themselves involved in. But the point still stands that they’ve done their best, from what I see, of trying to pick up the pieces in their lives to still be functioning members of society. Being an inner-city kid, I saw family members go in and out of jail a lot. I remember wondering, man, that’s messed up, because you went to jail or whatever and you can’t vote. Or, when you’re out of jail, you can’t get a job.
