Richard Patrick Versace (/vɜːrˈseɪs/; April 16, 1940 – February 25, 2022) was an American basketball coach and executive.
He was also the first American of Puerto Rican descent to have coached a National Basketball Association (NBA) team.
Versace coached at St. Joseph High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Gordon Tech in Chicago.
Oddly, his first coaching position after college was at Forrest-Strawn-Wing High School in the small Central Illinois community of Forrest during the years of 1964 and 1965.
In the early 1980s, he was head men's basketball coach at Bradley University, where he led the team to the 1982 NIT championship.
In his second season at Bradley the team finished first in the Missouri Valley Conference and qualifying for the NCAA tournament.
And in 2002, the Grizzlies hired NBA legend Jerry West as President of Basketball Operations, and Versace assumed the role of General Manager and remained with the team through the end of the 2004-2005 season.
On October 8, 2007, Versace announced that he would run as a Democratic Party candidate for Illinois' 18th Congressional District seat, then held by Republican Congressman Ray LaHood who was retiring.