By RaShad Miller
The Dallas Mavericks announced today that Rick Welts will take over as their President and Chief Executive Officer at the beginning of the calendar year. He will replace current Mavericks President and CEO Cynt Marshall, who will stay with the franchise as a consultant until the end of 2025. On Wednesday afternoon, Marshall and Welts were accompanied by Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont to discuss the transition. Dumont convinced Welts to come out of retirement; Welts had been serving as an executive and an advisor for the Golden State Warriors. As team president, he helped transform the Warriors into a championship caliber team. Prior to working with Golden State, helped cultivate the NBA as we know it today. He worked in the front office alongside David Stern for 17 years and introduced the concept of NBA All Star Weekend in 1984. Welts was also instrumental in the marketing of the ‘Dream Team’ which assisted in taking the game of basketball globally in 1992.
Mavericks forward Klay Thompson spoke to the media before the Mavericks take on the Los Angeles Clippers tomorrow night. He spoke highly of the incoming CEO saying that he’s “very excited. I’ve got a great past with Rick. I’ve lost a few bets to him from the Apple Cup [annual football game between Washington State and the University of Washington] because he’s a Huskie alum. We always have that rivalry going. It’s an incredible hire for the team and for me”. As one half of the legendary ‘Splash Brothers’, Thompson was an integral part of the Warriors during his first thirteen years in the NBA, winning four championships in his time with Golden State.
Rick Welts is the first openly gay American sports executive after coming out in 2011. He has served on advisory boards that campaign against homophobia in sports. He hopes to further the work of Cynt Marshall and believes she has done an excellent job of making the Mavericks a community of inclusivity and diversity. Welts would tell the media that he is a “big believer in inclusion and I do believe that when you have people of the same background sitting around the table talking to each other, you don’t have the richness of experience and conversation that you do. People with very different backgrounds approach every day in a different way because that’s where the best ideas go. It’s not like a social strategy. It’s a business strategy. You get better business results when you’re really tapping into people who represent your customer base, your fan base, and really try to understand different points of view we have.”
Then-Mavericks governor Mark Cuban brought in Cynt Marshall as Mavericks Chief Executive Officer in 2018 after decades of allegation of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct within the organization. Since her arrival, Marshall has dramatically changed the landscape of the organization by hiring more women and people of color in leadership positions. She is the first Black female CEO in NBA history and was named one of Worth Magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Sports. As the current CEO gave the incoming one a physical baton to symbolize the ‘changing of the guard’, Welts said that the biggest lesson he’s learned from Cynt Marshall was “one that I have honed. I think that you can empower people to bring their authentic selves to work and know their contribution can make a difference.” He hopes to carry on the legacy that Cynt Marshall has laid the groundwork for and bring the same success he’s brought to everything he has been a part of.