In announcing his retirement, effective at season’s end, Warriors president Rick Welts leaves behind a legacy unlikely to be matched in its variety and scope.
“Simply put, Rick Welts played a transformational role in creating the modern NBA during his more than 40 years as a pioneering league and team executive,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in a statement.
In the realm of professional basketball, these will be remembered as his most valuable contributions:
All-Star Weekend
When the All-Star Game came to San Francisco in 1967, it was played on a Tuesday night at the Cow Palace. There were four games in the league just two days prior, and the Warriors traveled to Los Angeles the following day. “It really was a two-day event” over the years, Welts said in a 2018 interview with KTVU. “We all got on an airplane, flew into the city the night before, had a banquet — which usually featured a really bad comedian — then got together for the game and went home.”
That all changed when Welts joined the NBA league office as a promising young executive in 1982. He had seen the American Basketball Association stage a memorable slam-dunk contest (won by Julius Erving) in 1976. He became fond of Major League Baseball’s old-timers games, particularly one staged in Washington, D.C., in July 1984. “I think I’ve got it,” Welts recalled telling David Stern, who had just taken over as NBA commissioner. “Let’s have a game where we can bring back great players and have a slam-dunk contest, highlighting one of the most spectacular plays in the game.”
Entirely due to Welts’ inspiration, All-Star Weekend was born. Its appeal really took hold, he said, with the advent of the 3-point shooting contest in 1986. “It was designed for Larry Bird (who won the first three),” he said. “It turned out to be the most consistently good event of the whole weekend.”
The Dream Team
Stern came to gain implicit trust in Welts, in essence his right-hand man as he rose to the title of executive vice president, chief marketing officer and president of NBA Properties. “He did everything, and he was great at everything he did,” Stern told The Chronicle in 2018. “He has an innate understanding of the capacity and potential of sports, combined with the ability to deliver results.” Stern, who died in January 2020, had visions of global expansion at a time when the idea seemed pointless to many executives around the league, and, like Welts, he found it inexcusable that the U.S. settled for a bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics while fielding a team of collegiate players.
“Only in the U.S. would there be a debate that it was unfair to send our best athletes to the Olympics,” Welts told the Chronicle. When FIBA modified its rules to allow NBA players into the Olympics, Welts helped turn the tide of U.S. resistance. Placed in charge of marketing for a team built around iconic talent, Welts called it “the easiest sales job in history” with the likes of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley signing up.
It came to be known as the Dream Team, and once the players arrived in Barcelona for the 1992 Games, “As big as we thought it would be, it was so much bigger,” Welts said. “The hotel was surrounded by crowds 24 hours a day. I can’t imagine traveling with the Beatles was any different.”
Some were turned off by the mismatches — the team won its eight games by an average of nearly 44 points, routing Croatia 117-85 in the gold-medal game — and critics claim the majesty of an NBA-controlled team has worn off. But that’s really not the point. The ’92 tournament created fervent interest among young players around the world. They were dreaming, as well, and today we find a league admirably loaded with international stars.
Magic Johnson and AIDS outreach
Welts was the first openly gay executive in the NBA, coming out in 2011. Stern disclosed in a New York Times interview that he had known of Welts’ sexuality for years, steadfastly honoring his desire to keep it private, but the commissioner never wavered in his friendship and support. When Welts’ longtime partner, L. Arnie Chinn, died of complications from AIDS in 1994, Stern and his wife mailed a check for $10,000 to Chinn’s memorial fund at the University of Washington.
By that time, Stern and Welts had become two of Magic Johnson’s most trusted allies. When Johnson tested positive for HIV in 1991, they worked in private for days to orchestrate his announcement. Johnson was scorned and dismissed by a significant number of NBA players and a skeptical public, swayed by information that proved to be inaccurate about the disease. He retired immediately from the Lakers, but played in the All-Star Game and the Olympics with the NBA’s blessing. Stern and Welts had done their research into the scientific findings on HIV and AIDS, and they refused to get caught up in a misguided wave of panic.
“We changed the debate on AIDS in this country because of Magic,” Stern told The Chronicle in 2018 for a story on Welts’ induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “We developed NBA Cares, proof that sports has ability to make enormous outreach.”
The WNBA
Welts met Val Ackerman when she joined the NBA front office as a staff attorney in 1988, and they were always brainstorming. “Each of them were looking for the next project that would propel our growth,” Stern told reporters in 2018. “With Val, it was the WNBA, and that’s where Rick worked with her on starting it. Rick was always trying to improve anything he touched.”
Welts and Ackerman launched the WNBA in June 1997 and, with attendance figures exceeding expectations over the first two seasons, they landed a brand of sponsorship and television revenue their rival never secured. (The American Basketball League folded in 1998).
Arriving on the heels of the fabulous U.S. Olympic team, the WNBA was able to sign Cynthia Cooper, Tina Thompson, Lisa Leslie, Ruthie Bolton, Rebecca Lobo and Teresa Witherspoon, among others, soon adding Sheryl Swoopes, Yolanda Griffith, Ticha Penicheiro, Chamique Holdsclaw and Nikki McCray. Ackerman was the league’s founding president, serving through 2005. (She is now commissioner of the Big East conference.)
“I have to laugh,” Welts told the Chronicle two years ago, “we did some things right, but we did so many things wrong. To look at the quality of play from that first season and fast-forward to now, it looks like they’re playing a different sport. Right now, the WNBA is in the best shape it’s ever been in. When you think about it, the women coming into the league today have never known a world where there wasn’t a WNBA.”
Bruce Jenkins is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: bjenkins@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Bruce_Jenkins1