Rick Welts had a vision, proceeded to create NBA All-Star Weekend

SAN FRANCISCO – Because Rick Welts had a vision, the NBA All-Star Weekend is practically on every sports fan’s calendar.

Before 1984, on the weekend of the NBA All-Star game, there was no Rising Stars Challenge, no Slam Dunk contest, no Skills Challenge and certainly no Three-Point Contest. There were, in fact, no events at all on Friday and Saturday.

“Everybody arrived on Saturday, there would be a dinner banquet on Saturday night — usually with a bad comedian,” Welts said. “We’d show up in the middle of the day the next day and play the All-Star game, and everybody went home.”

Not anymore. Those days are long gone. The NBA All-Star Weekend has evolved into must-see TV.

Thanks to Welts, games and events are staged on Friday and Saturday, serving as the precursor to the granddaddy of them all – Sunday’s All-Star game.

From 1982-99, Welts worked in the NBA’s league office in New York and eventually became the executive vice-president, chief marketing officer and president of NBA Properties. During that period, he was credited with creating the All-Star Weekend and all of its bells and whistles.

“You have to put a time stamp on when that was,” Welts, now the chief executive officer of the Dallas Mavericks, told Mavs.com. “Going to Denver in 1984 in February, Denver of course had a great ABA heritage before their NBA Nuggets’ days. You also have to keep in mind that Larry O’Brien was the commissioner of the NBA only through that weekend. David Stern had been elected and was going to be starting as the commissioner the day after the All-Star game.

“I was a fairly new arrival to the NBA and my first job was to go out and try to convince corporate partners to invest in the NBA, which, of course, that’s what a league does. In 1982 the league didn’t do that. I was the first person to actually do that.”

Welts came to the NBA from Seattle, where he was the director of public relations when the SuperSonics captured the 1979 NBA title. When he moved from the Pacific Northwest to New York, he was a visionary on the move and primed to make things happen.

“I had no idea when I moved from Seattle, where we won a championship and everybody loved the NBA, what a mess the NBA was in 1982 on a national basis,” Welts said. “I was having a tough time finding anybody who would actually spend money on the NBA. The league didn’t even start planning the All-Star game until about three months before the event back then.

“Carl Scheer, who was the president of the Nuggets, came to New York and we got to work and Carl suggested that to celebrate the Nuggets’ ABA heritage that it would really be cool if they re-created one of the most famous events in basketball history – the ABA Slam Dunk contest from 1976 — and do it at halftime of the All-Star game.

“I said, ‘Carl, we’re on CBS. We’ve got whatever the feature was that we’re running at halftime. That’s not going to work.’ But it was interesting.”

So interesting that Welts didn’t totally dismiss the idea.

“That night I went home and was sitting in my little Manhattan apartment and wondering how I was going to sell something, and I turned on the TV and it was something on called the Cracker Jack Old-Timer’s game in baseball in Washington, DC,” Welts said. “Some 60 year old guy got up and hit a home run right over the Cracker Jack sign in right field — and a lot of dots connected at the same time.”

For Welts, what connected in his mind was a star-studded package of events that would ultimately spice up the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, which he introduced to Stern.

“One of the things Stern had talked about when he became commissioner, his goal was to embrace the history of the NBA,” Welts said. “We had no photographic archives of our games, we had no video archives of our games, we had no relationships with the players and coaches who had been in the NBA prior to our time there. So, he felt like the league’s role was to embrace its history and celebrate its history, so I had that in my head.

“So, I came into the office the next morning and I went into (Stern’s) office and said, ‘I have an idea. Why don’t we add a Saturday to our Sunday All-Star event, and why don’t we do a slam dunk contest to celebrate the ABA heritage of the Nuggets, and we can do an Old-Timer’s game and bring back so many of these players that you want to embrace and get in touch with and celebrate their history at the same time.” And he liked it.”

Stern, according to Welts, pitched the idea to O’Brien, who initially dismissed it. However, a few days later, Stern went back and discussed the idea again with O’Brien, who gave it the green light – with two conditions.

Welts said Stern told him: “You don’t embarrass Larry O’Brien on his last weekend in office as the commissioner of the NBA, No. 1. And No. 2. ‘There is no budget. So, you’ve got to go figure out how to pay for this thing.’

“Great.”

Welts said he convinced Schick — a brand of safety razors and personal care products — to invest some money in the Old-Timer’s game. He also convinced Gatorade to sponsor the Slam Dunk Contest, which they still sponsor today.

“We sold out every ticket in (the 1984 All-star game at) Denver’s McNichols Arena – all 17,000 seats at $5 each,” Welts said. “We were a little nervous about the price. It seemed pretty expensive at the time.

“One wonderful stroke of luck is that Julius Erving agreed to come back at the end of his career – he had won the ABA Slam Dunk Contest in 1976. In 1984 at the tail end of his career, he agreed to come back and participate one more time in the Slam Dunk Contest.”

Erving ran the length of the court and took off inside the free throw line and perfected one of his patented dunks. But he lost the Slam Dunk contest in ’84 to Larry Nance.

Still, the All-Star Weekend was a smashing success.

“We got seven pages of coverage in Sports Illustrated, who had never covered an NBA All-Star game before,” Welts said. “Stern was being heralded as this new marketing genius that’s going to help turn around the fortunes of the NBA, and I’d actually sold a few sponsorships, which made more sponsors interested in getting associated with the NBA.”

Welts eventually left the NBA and became the president and chief executive officer of the Phoenix Suns from 2002-11. And Steve Kerr became the general manager and president of basketball operations for the Suns from 2007-10.

Kerr and Welts were on the same payroll again when Welts worked as the president of the Golden State Warriors from 2011-21 and stayed on as an advisor through last year, while Kerr became the Warriors head coach in 2014 – a position he still holds today.

The Warriors won NBA titles in 2015, ’17, ‘18 and 22, and Kerr remembers vividly the role Welts played in the team’s success.

“Rick’s the best – one of the best people I know,” Kerr told Mavs.com. “We worked together in Phoenix. He’s a collaborator, he’s a unifier, he’s full of life, full of joy, and he’s really sharp. That’s a great hire for Dallas.

“He worked for the league for years and the whole concept of All-Star Weekend was Rick’s idea. And he worked closely with David Stern. Part of what he brings is his immense knowledge of the league and his experience with the league and his understanding of how business operates both from a franchise level and from a league standpoint.”

Warriors superstar point guard Stephen Curry, who will be playing in his 11^th NBA All-Star game when the league’s classic will be held Sunday at Chase Center, also spoke highly of Welts.

“He’s a great guy,” Curry said. “Obviously, his storied history in the league — working on the team side, working on the league side — he’s had success everywhere he’s gone. He had a big part in our success matching the winning that we were doing on the court to growing the brand of the Warriors elsewhere.

“He’s super smart and super personable, and he’s a great asset and a resource to have. He’s super valuable knowing the experiences that he’s had across all these different jobs and responsibilities.”

Welts marvels at how All-Star Weekend has grown over the years and how its popularity has exploded to include an All-Star Celebrity Game, the Rising Stars Challenge, the HBCU Classic, the Skills Challenge, the Three-Point Contest, the Slam Dunk Contest, the G League Up Next game, and capped with Sunday’s popular All-Star game.

Last year’s game – and in many of the All-Star games in recent years – the fans have been critical, because the players haven’t been putting out a full effort. So the NBA introduced a new format in place for Sunday’s game.

“I went last year,” Welts said. “Sunday was a mess. The league totally recognized it, totally admitted it and have come up with this new format for this year, so I have my fingers crossed like every other fan.

“I applauded the fact that the league has always wanted to get better and try to improve and try new things.”

After all, NBA All-Star Weekend is part of Welts’ legacy. Thus, he wants the All-Star Weekend to grow exponentially.

“It’s still the greatest gathering of people associated with the game of basketball that we get to have, because you can plan for it a year ahead,” Welts said. “Really, everyone around the world that’s involved with basketball will be in San Francisco to celebrate the game, to do business, to have fun.

“Almost what happens in the arena becomes secondary. But we want what’s happening in the arena to be great, so fingers crossed, knock on wood — whatever gives us good luck and unfolds in San Franciso will be great.”

Still, Welts recalls the days of those gatherings long ago before All-Star Weekend was born.

“I laugh at that one hotel,” he said. “That’s what it was. Everybody who — from journalists to executives to players to everybody — was in one hotel.

“And now, of course, I have no idea, but there’s probably 25 hotels housing All-Star people. Hopefully, what we see unfold will be a lot of fun for the fans and more fun for the players.”

X: @DwainPrice