{"id":604957,"date":"2026-04-25T04:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T04:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/604957\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T04:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T04:33:10","slug":"phoenix-native-tommy-nunez-sr-first-hispanic-nba-referee-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/604957\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix native Tommy Nu\u00f1ez Sr., first Hispanic NBA referee, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 The basketball world is honoring a trailblazer who dedicated his life to the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tommy Nu\u00f1ez Sr., who grew up in Phoenix and became the first Hispanic referee in the NBA in 1972, died Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He refereed for more than 30 years in the NBA before retiring in 2002.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"File photo of Tommy Nunez in Indianapolis, Wednesday, March 7, 2001.   (AP Photo\/Michael Conroy)\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/P7MQDTYUBFC4PB5VUB6Z2URCNM.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>File photo of Tommy Nunez in Indianapolis, Wednesday, March 7, 2001.   (AP Photo\/Michael Conroy)(AP Photo\/Michael Conroy)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tommynunezfoundation.com\/about\/abouttommy\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/tommynunezfoundation.com\/about\/abouttommy\">According to his foundation<\/a>, during his off-seasons, Nu\u00f1ez worked for the Arizona Department of Economic Security\u2019s Job Training Department and the U.S. Department of Labor\u2019s Job Corps, working with what he calls \u201cthe underdogs of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Nu\u00f1ez also organized the Tommy Nu\u00f1ez National Hispanic Basketball Classic, an annual tournament in Arizona that brought Latino players and referees together and raised money for youth scholarships.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 The basketball world is honoring a trailblazer who dedicated his life to the game. Tommy&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[4958,263001,355,19156,194766,99,263000,263002],"class_list":["post-604957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-azfamily","tag-national-hispanic-basketball-classic","tag-nba","tag-phoenix-news","tag-ref","tag-sports","tag-tommy-nunez-sr","tag-youth-scholarships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}