Warriors’ Welts attends All-Star weekend in N.C.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. >> Rick Welts, the Warriors’ president/chief operating officer and the
NBA’s most prominent openly gay executive, attended NBA AllStar weekend after having initial reservations because of North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ law.
USA Today first reported the news.
Welts did not attend Sunday’s All-Star game, but he was here for All-Star weekend on Friday and Saturday.
Welts’ participation in All-Star weekend here is notable for two reasons.
As a former high-ranking NBA executive, Welts created the concept of NBA AllStar weekend in 1984. That morphed into a star-studded event that grew to include the Slam Dunk Contest and the 3-point shootout.
Second, the NBA had relocated its All-Star Game in 2017 from Charlotte to New Orleans because of a bill that required transgender people to use restrooms, locker rooms or showers in government buildings and schools that matched their biological sex, and not their gender identity. Welts publicly announced in a New York Times article in 2011 that he is gay.
The view of the league office and many others, (is the bill) “discriminated against the LGBTQ community,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a press conference Saturday. “We then made a decision that it was inconsistent with the values of this league to play the All-Star Game here under those circumstances.”
North Carolina has since replaced that law with HB142, which allows transgender people to use a bathroom or other facility that identifies with their gender. But local governments still cannot offer protections for any transgender people.
“For many people, it didn’t go far enough, and I’m sympathetic to those who feel that there are still not appropriate protections for the LGBTQ community,” he said. “But I also felt from a league standpoint it was important, and as part of our core values, to work with people and ultimately to move forward with the community.”
• Honorary All-Stars Dirk Nowitzki and Dwyane Wade checked into the game with 58 seconds left in the first quarter.
Nowitzki splashed a 3-pointer from the right wing on his first offensive possession, and drained another from the left wing on the subsequent possession, giving Team Giannis a 5337 advantage entering the second quarter. He added a third at the 9-minute mark in the second quarter and scored nine points on 3-of-3 shooting in 3:58 in the opening half.
• The 2019 slam dunk contest at the NBA’s AllStar weekend involved several props, but it was Hamidou Diallo’s decision to abandon one that created the dunk that everyone will remember from Saturday night’s competition.
Diallo, a rookie shooting guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, initially rolled a ball rack onto the court for his second attempt of the first round. He decided that wasn’t right, so he asked “the biggest person in the building” to step into the lane instead. What ensued was a remarkable display of athleticism and creativity. After running up and going into a deep crouch, Diallo exploded into the air, leaping over Shaquille O’Neal, the 7-foot-1 Hall of Fame center, clearing the big man’s head, and finishing the dunk with his hand plunged deep inside the basket.
The dunk, which received a perfect score of 50 from the judges, managed to be an homage to two of the best dunks of Vince Carter’s career. Carter notoriously jumped over the head of Frederic Weis in the middle of a game at the 2000 Olympics and he hung from his elbow after finishing one of his dunks on his way to a win in the 2000 dunk contest.
Diallo went on to beat Dennis Smith Jr. of the New York Knicks in the finals to be crowned the 2019 slam dunk contest champion.
• When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver thinks about parity in professional sports, he sees the NFL as the gold standard. But he can’t help but chuckle that the New England Patriots are such a constant presence in the Super Bowl.
For the last four seasons the Warriors and Cavaliers have met in the Finals. That will change this year — the Cavaliers without LeBron James are one of the NBA’s worst teams. But the Warriors seem poised to head back to the Finals for a fifth straight year.
“If you look at the last, I think, 11 years, we’ve had seven different teams win championships,” Silver said Saturday. “But if you look back to the first 60 years of this league, I think three teams — the Lakers, Celtics, and the Bulls — won 60 percent of all championships. So, progress.”