Warriors owner gay
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Rick Welts, the Warriors’ president/chief operating officer and the NBA’s most prominent openly lgbtq+ executive, attended NBA All-Star weekend after having initial reservations because of North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ law.
USA Today first reported the news.
It is not clear if Welts will attend Sunday’s All-Star game. But he was here for All-Star weekend on Friday and Saturday.
Welts’ participation in All-Star weekend here is notable for two reasons.
As a former high-ranking NBA executive, Welts created the principle of NBA All-Star weekend in 1984. That morphed into a star-studded event that grew to encompass the Slam Dunk Challenge and the 3-point shootout.
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Second, the NBA had relocated its All-Star game in 2017 from Charlotte to New Orleans because of a bill that required transgender people to use restrooms, locker rooms or showers in government buildings and schools that matched their living
Golden State Warriors president Rick Welts marries his longtime partner
The president of the Golden State Warriors has wed his longtime partner.
Rick Welts and Todd Gage were married by San Francisco Mayor London Breed in her office on Friday, Welts announced on Twitter.
He and Gage include been together nine years, Welts said in his post.
Welts, who came out as gay in 2011, has been an instrumental part of the Warriors' success over the last nine years, helping the team appear in five straight NBA Finals, achieve three championships.
An openly same-sex attracted president of an NBA team stands in contrast to what has been the norm in men's major league sports in the U.S. In 2018, Collin Martin, a soccer player for Minnesota Merged announced on Twitter that he was gay, which made him the only openly gay male player in North American sports leagues. He no longer plays with the team.
Maia Davis is a breaking news editor with NBC News Digital.
Rick Welts has found the ideal fit: a recent gig in the Bay Area with the Golden State Warriors.
Welts connected the Phoenix Suns in 2002 as president. He announced in May that he was gay, becoming the first senior sports executive to do so.
Welts was hired as Golden State's president and chief operating officer Monday and will report to owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber while handling the franchise's business operations.
The team planned to introduce Welts on Tuesday at the team's apply facility. He replaces Robert Rowell, who resigned in June as the club's top executive for business operations.
Welts left a position as president and chief executive of the Phoenix Suns earlier this month for personal reasons, four months after he became the first senior sports executive to openly acknowledge he was gay.
Welts said at the time he would change location to Northern California to be with his partner.
"It's an opportunity probably for the first occasion for me to align my personal and professional lives," he said.
The 58-year-old former NBA front office executive — he was third in control when he left in 1999 — said he hoped to return to work for a professional sports franchise in th
SAN FRANCISCO – A nervous Rick Welts knocked on Bill Russell’s door in Seattle 10 years ago to inquire a huge favor. The longtime NBA executive wanted the Hall of Fame center to undertake a rare interview on his behalf regarding the news that he was coming out as gay.
While Russell is known for disliking media interviews, the 11-time NBA champion said without hesitation that he would help his aged friend.
“I remember walking up to that front door and was like, ‘I have no plan what I’m going to say,’ ” Welts told The Undefeated in an interview this week. “He opens the door with his Boston Celtics hat on. Bill takes me into his little den where there are two chairs and there’s a table in between us. There is a framed picture of Barack Obama on the table with an inscription that study, ‘To Bill. You are my inspiration.’ There is nothing intimidating about this at all.
“I speak to him, ‘I don’t know what you know or don’t know, but I am lgbtq+. I am going to ask you to do the one thing you hate to execute more than anything in your experience, which is communicate to a writer. He was prefer, ‘Yeah, of course. Sure.’ And then the next hour all I heard was that marvelous cackle laugh about something t
RickWelts,who in 2011 became the first prominent U.S. sports executive to publicly recognize as a male lover man, has tied the knot.
The president and leader operating officer of the Golden Declare Warriors wed his partner, Todd Gage, in a Jan. 10 ceremony at San Francisco’s Municipality Hall. Mayor London Breed was the couple’s officiant.
Welts confirmed the nuptials with a earnest photo on Twitter. He and Gage, who is a flight attendant, hold been together for nine years.
Welts, a Seattle native, came out in a May 2011 interview with The New York Times in hopes of setting an example for other LGBTQ people who expect to pursue a career in professional sports.
“This is one of the last industries where the subject is off limits,” said Welts, who was serving as president of the Phoenix Suns at the time. “Nobody’s pleasant in engaging in a conversation.”
Just months after the interview was published, he relocated from Arizona to California, and by September, he’d been hired as the Golden Articulate Warriors’ new president and chief operating officer.
While the reaction to his coming out was “overwhelmingly positive,” he told the University of Washington Magazine in 2011, “The que