Che Flores, who is about to begin their second season as an NBA staff referee, shared their identity as the NBA’s inaugural openly nonbinary and transgender referee in a recent GQ feature.
Entering their second season as an NBA staff referee after officiating 35 games last season, Flores, who prefers the pronoun ‘they,’ also officiated 12 games as a nonstaff official in the 2021-22 season.
Che Flores explained to GQ, “One piece I was missing for myself was that no one knew how I identified. Being misgendered as she/her always just felt like a little jab in the gut. I can go through the world and even my job a lot more comfortably.”
While some NBA executives had prior knowledge of Flores’s identity, many of their colleagues learned about it during preseason meetings last month.
Over the past decade, Che Flores has officiated games in both the G League and the WNBA and has worked at significant basketball events, including the G League Finals, the WNBA Finals, and the NCAA women’s national championship game.
Flores expressed to GQ, “I just think of having younger queer kids look at somebody who’s on a high-profile stage and not using it. And I’m not using the league to an advantage in any way. This is just to let young kids know that we can exist, we can be successful in all different ways.”
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