Phoenix Suns basketball operations executive announces he is gay

Many sectors of American professional life have been improved by gay people. An open lesbian runs a Fortune 500 company while an openly gay man runs Apple. Gay people are almost invisible at the highest levels of basketball.

The NBA's first openly gay executive came out in 2011. The announcement of the All-Star Weekend was well-received by league circles. Eleven years ago, that was the case.

Basketball operations and business operations have been separate entities in the NBA for many years. The two are separated in many cities. There are many people who make their living in the disciplines of sales, marketing, legal, accounting, and human resources at one place.

The team's training facility is a completely different place. The players' weight room has loud music coming from it. The main attire is sweats. There are players, coaches, personnel scouts and athletic trainers in the hall.

Ryan Resch works in basketball operations for the Suns and is the front office's chief-of-staff. James Jones has been a mentor to him and he attends to the big picture responsibilities of team-building.

The rest of the Suns' staff came out to Jones. He is the first openly gay person to work in the NBA.

The existence of gay men and women on the basketball side is something Resch wants to change.

" His coming out was not a big deal in our day to day operations or my personal relationship with Ryan," said Luke Loucks, who worked under Resch in Phoenix and played four years of basketball at Florida State. He let us know, but it really didn't change anything, because it shouldn't.

Many young hoop fans, like Resch, entered the world of basketball. He wanted to be with the players. He reached out to Scott Drew at the Bears to see if he could help the team. Drew agreed to Resch's request. Resch was named a student manager in the fall of 2012 and was responsible for buying groceries for the locker room.

The world tour that Resch was on included stops in Germany, North Dakota and Las Vegas. He put himself into basketball and his studies on the conservative Baptist campus because he wanted to be a part of the team. He received his degree in 2004.

Resch returned to Waco as the men's team's graduate assistant after a year at the University of Missouri in pursuit of a doctorate in political science. He kept playing basketball.

It was difficult for Resch to let the team environment go. When I came back to the team environment at the Big 12 tournament, it felt like I was home.

Resch was offered an internship with the Phoenix Suns after he returned to Baylor. He became a liaison between the coaching staff and the analytic group. Resch had a mental inventory of his life during the COVID-19 stop. There was a realization that had been there for a while.

He told himself that he was gay and that he needed to stop running away. "That's probably something that I knew the entire time, but that path to acceptance was rocky and much longer than it should have been."

Resch talked to us about coming out, his time as a young basketball executive in Phoenix, and the importance of representation in the NBA.

What happened to you when you first joined the Suns?

I wasn't going to hide behind it anymore if I was going to do this the right way. I told James in my office after practice. When we played Miami at home, I wanted to bring someone I was watching at the time to sit with me in the executive suite. I can't do that unless you let the other executives know who you're bringing. In true James fashion, he has been referred to as the best teammate of all time by several of his former teammates, and it was among the most nondescript conversations we've ever had. He was just so accepting and generous and kind about it from the start, and that was a beautiful thing. I was reassured that everything would be okay on the work front. There wasn't a big announcement to the staff after that. I am at work now.

A VP is asking James Jones if he can bring a guy you're seeing to a game, it's a dramatic trip from an internship to the position.

I arrived in Phoenix in the summer of last year as a full-time employee and started working with James around the same time. We share a lot of the same interests and have a good working relationship. From the beginning of my career, I wanted to make data relevant in a basketball way. We're failing in our job as analysts if we can't frame all that advanced data and modeling work in a language that front office executives can understand. I had to learn the game myself.

James and I had in-depth discussions about X's and O's, and I was very lucky that he trusted me and didn't view me as just another data person. I learned a lot from former Suns associate and interim head coach Jay Triano and James, who is so good with X's and O's. James told me that he saw a higher capacity for me in the role of macro-level, organizational-building of the front office, even though the coaching-slash-tactical side appealed to me. I became more involved in the front office as James became the general manager.

Do you have a good idea of the NBA draft? You can play for free and compete for a chance to win. An entry can be created.

He elevated me to the position of director of basketball strategy. We wanted to raise the floor of the organization and make the Phoenix Suns competitive again. We tried to get into the NBA bubble after the league shut down. The bubble changed the trajectory of our group. James gave me the title of chief-of-staff, a role I was effectively performing, but the title kind of legitimized it for everyone else. I was the vice president of basketball strategy and evaluation.

You are moving quickly into a senior position with one of the NBA's best teams because you are in the NBA fast lane. How are you handling this other part of your identity?

You only know what is normal relative to what you see as normal when you're in college. I didn't understand romantic relationships during that time. I didn't feel a strong desire to find a woman or a wife in a setting where it's fairly common for most men to do so.

I drowned myself in the basketball team in order to fill that void. For the first time in my life, I had a group of people who weren't going anywhere, when I was a military child. I was immobile. I knew that the people I worked with and the staff would be with me for a long time.

The same thing happened when I arrived in Phoenix. I tried to distract myself with my career while also trying to hide the truth inside of me, which I'm starting to realize is, "Hey, man, you're probably not completely straight, and that's why you're having a hard time putting work to the side I had my anchor ripped away, which was the team, after the Pandemic struck. Basketball is not permanent, the Phoenix Suns are not permanent, and your career is not permanent because of the amount of uncertainty and free time. It was necessary for me to put myself out there.

During the Pandemic, it was difficult for me to develop a couple of relationships because I had dated women before. I had reached a point where I couldn't run from my reality anymore. I told myself that I needed to stop hiding behind my work in order to confront who I am and what I'm made of.

When and how did you discover you are gay?

I talked to a few members of the staff after the national championship. They told me that winning the national championship doesn't change who I am. It doesn't change the way you live. What is important in your life isn't changed by it. When the Suns were up 2-0 in the Finals against Milwaukee, I realized I wouldn't feel fulfilled if we won. I will be happy but I won't feel fulfilled because we've accomplished what we set out to do.

I decided to separate myself from Ryan as the second in command of the Phoenix Suns front office. I realized how unhappy I was after looking at my personal life. The hardest part was asking what you're afraid of. Why aren't you willing to admit who you are and let the world know who you are?

When I decided to come out this season, I knew I was going to expose myself to a lot of people, including my colleagues, my family, and my dearest friends.

What happened to it?

It was hard to see how easy the process was when it started. When I came out, I didn't realize that the community that I would receive, not just incredible support from the people in my life, but other people outside of it, was huge.

One of the reasons that I became more confident in accepting who I was and what I could be is the letter Tim Cook wrote almost a decade ago. If Apple's CEO is gay, why can't there be a gay basketball operations executive in the NBA? College managers who are closeted know that they can have a path to basketball operations if they want to.

The NBA is currently investigating the Suns, who have been accused of racist and misogynistic behavior by many of their employees. Since you came out, have you had any face-to-face contact with the man?

After I came out to James and the rest of the organization, I hadn't seen him or talked to him in a while. My boyfriend was going to games during that time. He was amazing when I told him. He told me that he was happy that I could live as who I was and bring someone special to me. We talked about the man. We talked about the quality of the work that will determine my trajectory in the franchise. Merit is at the center of it.

How do you view your role in building best practices when there is uncertainty about the NBA investigation?

Improving the culture will be done by someone I know. The culture will be led by James and me. That is significant. My experience with Robert has been positive.

What other concerns did you have about coming out?

I don't think I'm very forward-facing. I don't like the spotlight or the attention. James and Monty do a lot of team building and being a good teammate. I didn't have a lot of reservations about coming out, but I was worried about being seen. I realized that it's important both from a representation standpoint and from a normalized standpoint. I would have reconciled my identity long before I did if someone had come before me.

There is no openly gay player in the NBA.

Gay men are able to give accurate answers when asked that question, but it's not as simple as people think. I think we need to remember that many of the people within basketball operations are in their early twenties to their thirties, and still in the development years of their lives, so they are potentially doing what I did and filling that void. I think we ask too much of the young men in the league. We want 19- and 20-year-olds to be the face of the franchise. In front of the entire basketball world, we ask 21- and 22-year-olds to perform at their best. We want young people to be worried about a lot of money. You don't have a lot of time to think about what's going on inside of you when you have all of that external pressure.