Former NBA Player Comes Out

Former NBA center John Amaechi has announced he's gay and he's written a book about it.

Yay.

Now, I must admit I don't think I've ever watched an NBA game and the only center I'm really familiar with is the one inside a jelly donut. Still, I'm always happy when a closeted gay man comes out. And someone like Amaechi, masculine, athletic and famous among people who pay attention to NBA games will prove to be a good role model for gay kids.

But I would hardly call Amaechi's coming out "brave." It would have been really brave of him to come out while still in the NBA, at a risk to his fame and career, as opposed to using his fame to come out and get a book deal. Coming out before retiring would have made him a true pioneer and made his book worth reading. As it is, it sounds like his book will follow the same tired trajectory of Billy Bean's, a former major league baseball player who came out after he left the sport:

In his book, Amaechi describes the challenge of being gay in a league where it's assumed all players are heterosexual. He describes the blatant anti-gay language and attitudes he experienced in NBA locker rooms.

No kidding.

One other quote in the WaPo story about Amaechi caught my attention:

"With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy," James said. "So that's like the No. 1 thing as teammates _ we all trust each other. You've heard of the in-room, locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays in there. It's a trust factor, honestly. A big trust factor."

Hmm. Which makes me wonder, "what really goes on in those locker rooms?" I may read Amaechi's book after all.