Do NBA Teams Pad the End of Their Bench With Sucky White Players? Doesn't Look That Way So Far

ESPN is ranking all 500 guys who are likely to be in the NBA this year from 500 (the worst) to 1 (likely LeBron).

I thought I would take this rare resource (name of 500 guys, pics of 400 guys) to evaluate the long-stated claim that NBA clubs have 10 primary spots where everyone competes, and then 2 reserved for white guys or white-looking guys who never play. If, in fact, this is true, then the spots 301-500 should be LOADED with guys who are not black, while the spots 1 to 300 should contain very few white faces (or at least, one would suspect, white faces at a far lower rate).

Now, this is an inexact science. One might claim that white players are generally overrated by the ESPN panel, so they show up higher than they should. I don't have any basis to evaluate such a claim. I will assume that the guys doing the rankings did not have any racial bias and tried their best to evaluate each player irrespective of race. I should also add, in a slightly embarrassed tone, that I cannot always draw a good line between guys who are deemed "white faces" and guys who are not. Klay Thompson is about as light-skinned as anyone in the league, but his dad is famous and his dad is deemed black, so people almost certainly do not see him as a token white guy. Najera, Yi, Francisco Garcia, Haddadi, Blake Griffin, Kris Humphries - all judgment calls. But overall, these close calls do not occur often enough to skew the rankings that much. So here we go.

So far, 337 guys have been rated, 66 of whom I deem to be "white faces" for my purposes. So, in the bottom 2/3 of the league, about 19.6% are white-ish.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6862838/nba-player-rankings-401-500
I recognize 11 guys as being white. So, 11%.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6865531/nba-player-rankings-351-400
7 white faces in 351-400 (sorry Najera, you count) -- 14%

If you stop right here, you see that of the bottom 150 NBA players, only 18 are white. 12%

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6871159/nba-player-rankings-301-350
13 white faces. 26%

This is the key point -- 11th men through 16th men are covered by 301-500. 15.5% of these players are white-ish.

espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6905498/nba-player-rankings-251-300
9 white faces plus Yi Jianlian -- 18-20%

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6939038/nba-player-rankings-201-250
14 white faces. -- 28%

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6968801/nba-player-rankings-181-200
7 white faces -- 35%

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6976682/nba-player-rankings-161-180
5 white faces so far and they have announced up to #164 -- 5 of 17 = 29%.

Looking at spots 164-300 (137 guys), 35 of these guys are white-ish. So 25.5%.

Conclusion -- The NBA teams do not pad the end of their benches with white players to boost fan interest.

In fact, the percentage of white players from 6th man to 10th man is nearly double what you see from 10th man to 16th man. If NBA clubs wanted to bolster their benches with white guys, it would seem likely that they could find white guys at roughly the same 25% rate that you see at 164-300. You do not see that happening. If anything, you see the opposite.

The bottom of the bottom (401-500) has very few white players. The reasons for this have not been analyzed by me. It may be that marginal white players self-select out of being 11th to 16th men in the NBA in favor of some other opportunity. It may be that white players only stick with basketball over the long haul if they are very clearly pro material. Or it may be that white players who are marginal players are somehow discriminated against on the very basis that they are, well, white, and lack certain physical gifts and "upside potential" necessary to keep them around for a further look.

In any event, the myth that white guys are kept around to pad the end of NBA benches does not appear to be borne out by the ESPN 164-500 player ratings.