Golden State Warriors president and chief operating officer Rick Welts, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, will retire after the 2020-21 NBA season, sources told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on Thursday.
Welts has spent 46 years working in the NBA and, in 2011, became the most prominent sports executive to acknowledge that he is gay. After beginning his NBA career as a ball boy with the Seattle SuperSonics in 1969 and literally fetching coffee for coach Bill Russell, Welts eventually was the team's public relations director when it won a championship in 1979.