A splattering of rain created dueling rainbows on the patio of a Downtown Phoenix restaurant on Friday, with the varying hues of collegiate apparel matching the budding ROYGBIV color palette in the sky.
The figurative rainbow above was made up of the school apparel donned by a who’s who of men’s college basketball coaches, all of whom descended upon the Valley for Saturday’s men’s Final Four.
The men on that Phoenix patio were there at the behest of one-man basketball impresario Gary Charles, who created a group called Advancement of Blacks in Sports (or ABIS) in 2020.
The former Wall Street banker and basketball coach used the police killing of George Floyd as a call to action, creating a place where leaders in the sport could find fraternity through their shared calling on the hardwood.
The New Yorker with the Cardinal red suit and fedora seemed to float around the patio, glad-handing countless basketball luminaries, from Hall of Famers like Tracy McGrady and legendary FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton to a slew of assistant coaches seeking their big moment on the sport’s grandest stage.
A Three-Man Weave of Hoops Passion
The mission of Charles’ brainchild is, according to ABIS’ website, “To connect and inspire people to boldly advocate for racial equity, social and economic justice for Blacks in sports.”
Charles, who is the president & chairman of the group, was able to get the sport’s brightest minds in one place (Downtown Phoenix) thanks to the Final Four, which brings hoops coaches from places like Ohio State and Kennesaw State together.
That means that there’s an opportunity for networking and fraternity, which Charles likened to one of the oldest drills in basketball — the three-man weave.
The drill, which forces a trio of players to make it from one end of a court to the other without dribbling, inspires fluidity in motion, while bringing players on a team into harmony at the same time.
It’s that type of harmony that Charles wants ABIS to provide for veterans of the game like Hamilton, who has won 643 games across 53 years of NCAA coaching, with up-and-coming coaches like Will Jones.
Jones is currently out of the coaching game, but was able to lead North Carolina A&T to a 37-35 mark and a MEAC Coach of the Year award in 2020.
The one-time HBCU head coach sees organizations like Charles’ as a way to build diversity in a profession that sorely lacks it at the moment.
According to a 2022 study by The Institute for Diversity in Sport (or TIDES), only 9% of Division I men’s basketball coaches in college were Black, with even lower percentages in Division II (6.2%) and Division III (5.9%).
While there’s no overnight solution for such a glaring lack of diversity, sports luminaries like Charles see gatherings like the one on that rain-splattered Phoenix patio as a small step towards shattering that glass ceiling for Black coaches.
In the meantime, Charles and his legion of protégés will keep up the good fight, using fraternity as a tool to break down decades of developmental gaps for Black coaches in sports.
Visit ABIS’ website to find out more about the group’s events and to support the association’s efforts to bolster diversity in coaching.