The NBA and Ethnicity: the Race of Each Team

See the updated stats for the 2011-12 season here.

Disclaimer:

Yes, I know that talking about race is stupid. There is only one race: the human race. Skin color has nothing to do with a person. Racial groups were created years ago in a different world and today they’re hardly used. Etc. However, the discussion of race in the NBA lives on, and I thought it’d be interesting to put some numbers behind things. It might be best, also, to think of this as an analysis of the background of NBA players, not race.

Background

The basis of this study is to find average ethnicity numbers weighted by minutes played, meaning on the bench types have less of an influence on the statistics. For example, if there is one Asian player on a team and he plays 10% of the total team minutes, then the team is 10% Asian. If a player had parents of different ethnicities, I allocated the weight accordingly. I separated the ethnic groups into African, Caucasian, Hispanic, East Asian, Native American, and Indigenous Australian. There are numerous issues that arise when dividing people into these groups, but this was the best I could do to make sense of it all.

As for the specifics behind racial classification, Hispanic is a catch-all for Spain and Portugal’s influence over the western hemisphere, where otherwise it would be very difficult finding the right numbers for, say, the amount of white and black ethnic roots for Al Horford. This means that Spanish players were not Caucasian but Hispanic in this study. The Caribbean islands were a difficult bunch of countries to set a “race,” so I used the historical background of each one – Hispanic like Puerto Rico or West African like Jamaica. Caucasian included middle-eastern and Semitic groups like Israeli Omri Casspi. I understand that Native Americans have genetic similarities to East Asians, but culturally there’s a clear divide and when the average person thinks about race today that person doesn’t group them with Asians. Indigenous Australian seems like a group that’s too specific, but anthropology differentiates them from East Asians or Africans. (They’re actually the Australoid group, but I thought that term sounded so wrong, just like Mongoloid and Negroid.) There are also issues where most African-Americans have some Caucasian blood, and many Americans have some Native American. However, I do not have a DNA test for each NBA player; I worked with what I could find.

This is the first article I’ve published about race, and I hope to do one about this current season or seasons past. Consequently, I may have errors in the database, and any help is appreciated. Some players had difficult backgrounds to discern, and I imagine like some people, especially in the US, a few NBA players don’t know their ethnic makeup. The data will be improved with time, but this version is thorough enough to publish my findings.

Results

The NBA for the 2010-2011 season was on averaged weighted by minutes played 75.5% African, 17.7% Caucasian, 6.4% Hispanic, 0.3% East Asian, 0.02% Native American, and 0.1% Indigenous Australian. The team with the highest percentage of international player-minutes was San Antonio with 39.7% where the league average was 18.7% (Duncan was listed as international for having been born in the US Virgin Islands, and yes, I know that sounds weird.) The team with the highest percentage for Euro-born players was Toronto, not surprisingly, with 29.3% while the average was 10.5%.

The only three East Asian players last year to receive time were Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian, and Jeremy Lin; all had little playing time, but Yao obviously had more in the past. The only Native American player was Delonte West, who said in an interview that his father was part Piscataway Indian. However, I couldn’t find exactly how much his Native American lineage was, so I estimated West’s as 25%. Previous Native American NBA players include Cherokee Parks and Bison Dele, who was murdered at sea by his brother. The only Indigenous Australian in the game is Patrick Mills, a lightning fast point guard now playing in China. Nathan Jawai is another Indigenous Australian who has played in 2008-9 and 2009-10, but he did not have any minutes in this season.

The whitest team in the league was Minnesota because of starters Kevin Love, Darko Milicic, and Luke Ridnour, while the blackest was Detroit who actually didn’t have any white players last season (Swede Jonas Jerebko was injured for the entire year and he’s back with the team now.) The most Hispanic was Denver. The results are found below in the following tables.

Team	African %	Team	Caucasian %
Detroit Pistons	91.6	Minnesota Timberwolves	38.8
Boston Celtics	90.1	Phoenix Suns	33.6
LA Clippers	87.9	Golden State Warriors	30.5
Cleveland Cavaliers	87.3	Indiana Pacers	29.1
Philadelphia 76ers	85.8	San Antonio Spurs	28.4
Charlotte Bobcats	85.4	New Jersey Nets	27.8
Washington Wizards	85.1	Orlando Magic	27.3
Miami Heat	83.5	Dallas Mavericks	26.1
Portland Trailblazers	82.6	Milwaukee Bucks	24.8
Memphis Grizzlies	80.4	Utah Jazz	24.4
Chicago Bulls	80.3	Sacramento Kings	22.3
New York Knicks	80.2	Houston Rockets	20.3
Oklahoma City Thunder	79.9	Oklahoma City Thunder	20.1
New Orleans Hornets	73.5	New Orleans Hornets	19.9
Denver Nuggets	73.0	Chicago Bulls	19.7
Atlanta Hawks	72.3	Toronto Raptors	18.0
Utah Jazz	71.7	New York Knicks	17.3
LA Lakers	71.4	LA Lakers	13.3
Indiana Pacers	70.9	Charlotte Bobcats	12.7
Sacramento Kings	70.7	LA Clippers	12.1
Orlando Magic	70.0	Miami Heat	10.0
Golden State Warriors	68.1	Atlanta Hawks	9.8
San Antonio Spurs	67.9	Philadelphia 76ers	9.5
Milwaukee Bucks	67.2	Boston Celtics	8.4
Houston Rockets	67.1	Cleveland Cavaliers	7.6
Dallas Mavericks	65.5	Washington Wizards	7.4
New Jersey Nets	65.0	Denver Nuggets	6.7
Toronto Raptors	64.3	Portland Trailblazers	4.0
Phoenix Suns	63.9	Memphis Grizzlies	2.2
Minnesota Timberwolves	61.2	Detroit Pistons	0.0

Team	Hispanic %	Team	East Asian %
Denver Nuggets	20.3	Washington Wizards	5.6
Atlanta Hawks	17.9	Golden State Warriors	1.4
Toronto Raptors	17.7	Houston Rockets	0.5
Memphis Grizzlies	17.3
LA Lakers	15.3
Houston Rockets	12.1	Team	Native American %
Portland Trailblazers	9.4	Boston Celtics	0.6
Dallas Mavericks	8.5
Detroit Pistons	8.4
Milwaukee Bucks	8.0	Team	Indigenous Australian %
New Jersey Nets	7.2	Portland Trailblazers	4.0
Sacramento Kings	7.0
New Orleans Hornets	6.6
Miami Heat	6.5
Cleveland Cavaliers	5.0
Philadelphia 76ers	4.7
Utah Jazz	3.9
San Antonio Spurs	3.7
Orlando Magic	2.7
New York Knicks	2.5
Phoenix Suns	2.5
Washington Wizards	1.9
Charlotte Bobcats	1.9
Boston Celtics	1.0
Chicago Bulls	0.0
Golden State Warriors	0.0
Indiana Pacers	0.0
LA Clippers	0.0
Minnesota Timberwolves	0.0
Oklahoma City Thunder	0.0

Team	Intnl. %	Team	Intnl. %
San Antonio Spurs	39.7	Toronto Raptors	29.2
Sacramento Kings	39.1	Portland Trailblazers	21.9
Milwaukee Bucks	37.7	Dallas Mavericks	21.5
Toronto Raptors	37.3	Utah Jazz	16.3
Phoenix Suns	31.5	Memphis Grizzlies	15.7
Dallas Mavericks	29.9	LA Lakers	15.6
Portland Trailblazers	27.2	Oklahoma City Thunder	15.3
Utah Jazz	26.8	Phoenix Suns	14.8
Oklahoma City Thunder	26.4	Minnesota Timberwolves	14.7
Memphis Grizzlies	22.7	Golden State Warriors	14.4
Chicago Bulls	21.2	Charlotte Bobcats	14.0
Atlanta Hawks	20.1	Sacramento Kings	13.8
Miami Heat	19.0	Orlando Magic	13.7
Denver Nuggets	18.7	New Jersey Nets	13.3
New York Knicks	16.5	San Antonio Spurs	12.8
Charlotte Bobcats	15.9	New York Knicks	10.8
LA Lakers	15.6	New Orleans Hornets	10.7
Minnesota Timberwolves	14.7	Detroit Pistons	10.7
Golden State Warriors	14.4	Milwaukee Bucks	7.6
Orlando Magic	13.7	Atlanta Hawks	6.4
New Orleans Hornets	13.5	Boston Celtics	6.2
New Jersey Nets	13.3	Miami Heat	5.8
Detroit Pistons	10.7	Chicago Bulls	5.0
Cleveland Cavaliers	10.2	Denver Nuggets	3.0
Washington Wizards	9.2	Philadelphia 76ers	0.4
Boston Celtics	7.2	Cleveland Cavaliers	0.3
Philadelphia 76ers	5.0	Houston Rockets	0.0
Houston Rockets	2.4	Indiana Pacers	0.0
Indiana Pacers	0.0	LA Clippers	0.0
LA Clippers	0.0	Washington Wizards	0.0

The league is, of course, largely black, but not every team is dominated by one ethnicity. Players of non-African ethnicities are not just relegated to bench duty; some are the foundation of teams. A third ethnic group along with African and Caucasian, the Hispanic influence on the game is growing. Countries like Spain, Brazil and Argentina produce some of the NBA’s best players and consequently they form a significant percentage of some NBA teams.

France contributed the most NBA players (excluding the US) but most of their players are African descendants and some were born in France’s overseas department entities like Guadelope. Despite the prevalent international influence on the game, two teams got zero minutes from players born in different countries: the Pacers and Clippers.

There are a few surprises in the data. Minnesota, not Utah or Indiana, was the whitest team. Toronto was not the most international team as they were fourth behind Sacramento and Milwaukee, which were definitely unexpected. No team, however, was more than 50% Caucasian, Hispanic, or International.

As for how ethnicity or background determined a team’s success, the charts at the end of the post show that there is no correlation whatsoever with ethnicity or percentage of internationally born players. Teams with more white players did not have a lower winning percentage overall, and vice versa. If you squint hard enough, you can sort of see a correlation in the international data, but a regression found that there was no significant prediction of wins from international player-minutes percentage. No correlation of wins with the international players is somewhat surprising because one could argue successful teams know how to find harder to locate players in Europe or other places, but recent champions like the 2006 Heat, the 2008 Celtics, and the 2004 Pistons gave few minutes to international players. Cellar-dwellers from last year include the Raptors and Kings, and both of those rosters could fill out a decent UN meeting.

Conclusion

I’ve attached a pie chart for every team showing the ethnic backgrounds. Again I’d like to reiterate that classifying by race is largely outdated, but it’s something we still talk about, especially in the NBA. The mainstream media ignore race when discussing the league, but fans do not. There are a number of prejudices associated with basketball, and these will not be solved by ignoring that Serge Ibaka and Steve Nash look dissimilar (it’s more than the hair.) We have an exciting league with players with very different backgrounds. There are players from Slovenia, Venezuela, Israel, Iran, and Switzerland. In 2010-11, the rookie of the year was half white and half black; an African-American won the MVP; the most improved player and leading rebounder was a white American; a Chinese all-star center retired; the leading shot-blocker was an Australian; and the best player on the championship team was German. Let’s celebrate that diversity, not hide it.