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Gay people have made strides in many sectors of American professional life. An openly gay man runs Apple, presides as the governor of Colorado, and an open lesbian runs a Fortune 500 company. But in the highest reaches of men’s basketball, gay people are almost invisible.
In 2011, 58-year-old Phoenix Suns CEO Rick Welts came out, becoming the league’s first openly gay executive. A longtime marketing whiz who hatched the idea for an All-Star Weekend, Welts and his announcement were well-received in league circles. That was 11 years ago.
Business operations, where Welts worked, and basketball operations (known to most fans as “the front office”) have long been separate entities in the NBA. In many cities, like Phoenix, the two are housed miles apart. One is staffed by people who make their living in the disciplines you can find in just about any business — sales, marketing, legal, accounting, human resources.
The team’s training facility houses basketball operations, and it’s an entirely different planet. The din of pounding music can be heard emanating from the players’ weight room. Sweats are the predominant attire. Players, coaches, personnel scouts and athletic trainers roam the halls.
Ryan Resch, 29, works in basketball operations for the Suns, where he serves as vice president of strategy and evaluation for the Suns and essentially functions as the front office’s chief-of-staff. He attends to the big-picture responsibilities of team-building and runs staff-wide meetings alongside general manager James Jones, who has been a mentor to him.
This past winter, Resch came out to Jones, then the rest of the Suns’ staff. He is the first openly gay person in league history to work basketball operations in an NBA front office.
“Ultimately my goal is to normalize for people in and out of the league the existence of gay men and women on the basketball side,” Resch says.
“His coming out was not a big deal in our day to day operations or my personal relationship with Ryan,”…
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Source : espn
