Las persons homosexuals they have made great strides in many sectors of American professional life. An openly gay man directs Appleanother is Governor of Colorado and a lesbian runs one of the 500 most productive companies in the United States, according to Fortune. Nevertheless until now among men’s basketball executives, homosexuals were almost invisible.
In 2011, Phoenix Suns CEO Rick Welts58, ‘comed out’ and became the league’s first openly gay executive. Welts, a longtime marketing genius, was the one who came up with the idea for an All-Star weekend, and his announcement fThey were well received in league circles. That was 11 years ago.
Ultimately, my goal is to normalize the existence of gay men and women in basketball for people in and out of the league.
Now Ryan Resch, 29 years oldvice president of strategy and evaluation of the Suns and chief of staff for the main office, has become the first openly gay person in NBA history who works in basketball operations at an NBA front office. “Ultimately, my goal is to normalize the existence of gay men and women in basketball for people in and out of the league,” he says in a extensive interview with ESPN.
His peers praise his courage
“His coming out wasn’t a big deal in our day-to-day operations or in my personal relationship with Ryan,” he says. Luke Louckswho worked with Resch on Phoenix, I played four years of basketball in Florida State and recently joined the coaching staff of Mike Brown en Sacramento. “We respect his courage and his decision to let us knowbut I didn’t really change anything, because I shouldn’t.”
I finally said to myself, ‘You’ve got to stop running from the obvious, and the obvious is that you’re gay.
Resch he admits it wasn’t easy to take that step: “I finally said to myself, ‘You have to stop running from the obvious, and the obvious is that you’re gay,'” he says. “That’s probably something I knew all along, but that road to acceptance was hard. and much longer than it should have been.
I said to myself, ‘Stop drowning in work, stop trying to hide behind all that as an excuse to not just confront who you are and what you are.
“Date women in the pastI started doing it again and developed a couple of relationships during that time period, which wasn’t easy during the pandemic. It eventually got to a point where I couldn’t run away from my own reality anymore.. Finally I said to myself: ‘Stop drowning in work, stop trying to hide behind all that. as an excuse to not just confront who and what you are.
