How NBA has impacted Thurgood Marshall College Fund and HBCUs

One by one, the students read their letters aloud.

They wrote them for NBA All-Star Game players and coaches, but the message offered more substance than Sunday's game or favorite All-Star memories.

About 20 students with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) met for a Zoom call Thursday evening with TMCF and NBA officials as well as Hall-of-Fame center Dikembe Mutombo. Many of them expressed gratitude for the NBA offering more than $300 million to the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, which has supported students and institutions at Historically Black Colleges and universities (HBCUs) for the past 34 years.

“I just wanted to thank them for how their support really helped shape the future for so many Black men and women and minorities in general,” said Omar Harbison, a second-year doctoral student specializing in educational leadership at Clark Atlanta University. “Their support will open the doors and dismantle barriers toward future opportunities.”

So when the NBA decided to host the All-Star Game in Atlanta amid a compressed season during a pandemic, the reasons went beyond maximizing revenue with their television contracts. The NBA wanted to help HBCUs both with additional financial support and exposure.

So the NBA and its partners (AT&T, Mountain Dew, State Farm, Taco Bell) will collectively provide more than $3 million to TMCF, United Negro College Fund (UNCF), National Association for Equal Opportunity (NAFEO) and Direct Relief’s Fund for Health Equity.

When LeBron James and Kevin Durant selected their All-Star teammates on the TNT telecast on Thursday, the implications went beyond respective bragging rights among the two stars. Team James will represent TMCF, which is comprised of 47 publicly-supported HBCUs. Team Durant will play for the UNCF, which consists of 37 member colleges. Each organization will initially receive $500,000, but its future fortunes rest on those teams’ performances. The leading team’s selected organization will earn an additional $150,000 at the end of each of the first three quarters and another $300,000 after the fourth quarter.

During Sunday’s dunk contest, Obi Toppin, Cassius Stanley and Anfernee Simons will pair with an HBCU that will receive an initial $50,000. The winning school will receive additional donations from the NBA ($100,000) and AT&T ($40,000), while AT&T will give another $30,000 to each runner up and $5,000 through TCMF for every dunk during the All-Star Game. All of that money will go toward TMCF’s COVID-19 HBCU Emergency Fund.

“It’s a great fund. Obviously it’s represented by someone that represents our Black community with the utmost respect in Thurgood Marshall,” James said Thursday on the TNT telecast, referring to the Supreme Court’s first Black justice who had succeeded in having the Court declare racial segregation in public schools as unconstitutional. “For us to be able to shed light on that program and shed light on those kids means a lot to me, my foundation and things we do in my hometown. I appreciate us being in a position even to do that. I’m very thankful.”

So are the students.

The NBA invited selected TMCF students to be among the 300 frontline workers and HBCU students to attend Sunday’s game as virtual fans. They will interact with players before the game through a virtual screen. And the students’ letters will be placed at each players’ locker.

The NBA collaborated with HBCU alumni to design a game court that incorporates various HBCU icons pertaining to academics, music and campus life. Seven HBCU students will have their artwork displayed in the arena, at the players’ hotel, on the broadcast and across NBA social platforms during All-Star weekend. And though the NBA will host its All-Star Game in a mostly empty arena, the league invited about 1,500 frontline workers, community partners and HBCU alumni, students and faculty to attend in person.

“The NBA’s financial support will definitely help students like me be able to finish school,” said Jaida West, a senior majoring in finance and minoring in accounting at Morgan State. “With the NBA having such a national platform, it will allow aspiring students to know more about HBCU’s. They’ll know there are universities and programs that’s really advocating for minorities to finish school and pretty much have an even playing field when it comes to getting job opportunities after graduation.”

Dr. N. Joyce Pain established the TMCF in 1987 partly because of the NBA’s presence.Former NBA commissioner David Stern was a cofounder of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and TMCF’s Board of Directors and remained on the board until he died in 2020.  

“David Stern’s name was not just attached to us. He was engaged,” said Dr. Harry Williams, the president and CEO of TMCF. “He came to the meetings and participated. He started the first major fundraiser, which started branding the organization.”

Stern’s initial efforts revolved around raising donations in past All-Star games. The NBA’s involvement morphed into other initiatives. In 2014, TMCF established the David J. Stern Scholarship that awards three HBCU students that completed their freshman year with $10,000 each toward tuition. Last year, the NBA and TMCF launched the “Innovate the Future” competition, a 1½-day event for HBCU students to solve various business case studies. Students of the winning team also receive merit-based scholarships. The NBA and TMCF plan to hold this year’s competition virtually on May 6-7.

Williams touted those scholarships as significant since TMCF and the NBA said more than 75% of HBCU students rely on Pell Grants and nearly 13% use PLUS loans to pay for college expenses. TMCF said that HBCUs have 1/8 of the average size of endowments compared to historically white colleges and universities.

The NBA’s partnership with TMCF goes beyond helping HBCU students with scholarships.

“They’ve been a resource for interns and full-time hires for us at the league office,” said Oris Stuart, the NBA’s chief people and inclusion officer. “We’ve personally benefitted from our partnership with Thurgood Marshall with identifying incredible talent. There’s a virtuous circle that exists because of our relationship with Thurgood.”

The NBA said it has more than 15 league office employees that attended HBCUs. This year, the NBA also included three participants from the TMCF Leadership Institute in their first-ever Future Sales Stars Program, a virtual development program designed to promote and increase diversity in the ticket sales and corporate partnerships field.

“This is a real partnership with the NBA,” Williams said. “This is not something that just occurred because of the social unrest that’s taking place in our country. The NBA has been with us from the very beginning.”

West and Harbison have not worked for the NBA but have benefitted from the NBA’s financial support for TMCF.

West remains on track to graduate in May and plans to begin a full-time job with Boeing this summer after interning with them the past two summers. Despite receiving a partial athletic scholarship to compete on the women’s track and field team, West became concerned about the amount of student debt she would inherit.

“I was always concerned about if I was going to be able to afford school. That’s how the Thurgood Marshall College Fund came into play. During my junior and senior year, I was going to struggle being able to afford it,” West said. “It really alleviates that stress. I’ve seen students not know if they’d be able to finish school just because of not having enough financial aid.”

Harbison had relied on a mix of various scholarships and student loans to complete a bachelor’s degree at Morehouse College (industrial-organizational psychology, 2000) and a master’s degree at Regent University (journalism and public relations, 2002). He then had varying jobs as a television assignment editor (WSB-TV, Channel 2), television producer (Taking Authority Broadcast) and adjunct professor (North Carolina Central University). But the economic recession in 2008 contributed toward reduced roles in his television gigs.

So Harbison pivoted toward education both as a part-time adjunct professor at Morehouse College’s journalism and sports program (2010-16) and a senior instructional media producer at Clark Atlanta University (2012-17). To avoid increasing his student debt, Harbison sought support from TMCF. He has one more year of course work left along with his dissertation. Harbison has his current loans deferred, has avoided adding on new debt and hopes to qualify for student loan forgiveness because of his work in higher education.

“It’s never too late to pursue your educational dreams and to have an organization like the NBA and TMCF support that,” Harbison said. “I would like to be an example for, If you think your life is over at a certain point,' it’s not. Life is a series of short chapters, and I’ve had a string of them. They’ve all been really exciting and fulfilling.”

They expressed an eagerness to see James because of his star power and his heavy involvement with social justice causes. Harbison, West and other HBCU students will have another opportunity both to share their gratitude to the All-Star participants and give TMCF more exposure.  

“The reason our relationship has persisted more than 33 years is because they are serving an essential need in the American educational system with their support for HBCUs,” Stuart said. “We will continue to be a part of that support. We see the importance of making sure that students of all backgrounds, have the ability, the access and the opportunity to fulfill their greatest ambitions.”

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