Warriors Name Former Suns Exec Rick Welts Team President

Rick Welts, who’s been in the news quite a bit this year, is joining the Golden State Warriors as President and COO. His former employer, the Phoenix Suns, gave him a nice recommendation. From the AZ Republic: “The Golden State Warriors spent their summer conducting a national search for a new president and chief operating officer. Suns Managing Partner Robert Sarver called this month to tell them who they should hire — his outgoing president and CEO. Eleven days after his nine-year stint of running the Suns’ business ended, Rick Welts accepted a job to run the Warriors’ business operations. The hire came a week after his first conversation with new Golden State owner Joe Lacob. ‘He (Sarver) really was the one who initiated the conversation on my behalf,’ Welts said after the hiring was announced Monday night. ‘I had been looking forward to doing different things but the opportunity with this team and this market worked so well for me geographically. I was not able to pass that up and I couldn’t be more ecstatic.’ Welts, 58, announced he was leaving the Suns on Sept. 9 to get his professional and personal lives aligned. He said he was asking out of his Suns contract 10 months early in order to be closer to his partner, who has joint custody of two children in Sacramento. In May, Welts became the highest-ranking executive in men’s sports to announce that he is gay. Upon announcing he was resigning from the Suns, Welts said he planned to do speaking engagements and was considering offers to write a book about his life.”