Less than two weeks after openly gay NBA executive Rick Welts left the Phoenix Suns to follow his heart, he’s been hired as president and COO of the Golden State Warriors. This is big, people. It’s another sign of the eroding homophobia in sports. It was one thing for Welts to come out. But to [...]
Posts under ‘NBA’
Moment #13: Magic Johnson announces he has HIV
Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Basketball, 1991: Magic Johnson’s announcement on Nov. 7, 1991, that he had tested positive for HIV and was retiring from the NBA was the biggest story in America. Johnson was a superstar — every network carried the press conference live and [...]
Rick Welts on NOH8, finding love, leaving the Suns, and opening closet doors in sports
Just 24 hours before his final moments as president of the Phoenix Suns, Rick Welts was looking ahead with memories of the years he was afraid to come out of the closet. Having posed hours before for the NOH8 campaign, his role in ameliorating that fear for others was top-of-mind. “Having had no one in [...]
Moment #15: Former NBA player John Amaechi comes out
Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Basketball 2007: Amaechi played for two of his five NBA seasons for the Utah Jazz for an owner who, after Amaechi had left the team, refused to show “Brokeback Mountain” in his theaters because of the gay theme. So it was [...]
Gay rumor lesson #2: Josh Selby rumor not true, completely fabricated
Early this week we got wind of a rumor on black gossip sites that rookie Memphis Grizzlies point guard Josh Selby is gay. The Web sites, which don’t deserve to be linked to, had shirtless photos of Selby (like the one on the right) and screen captures of an email telling the alleged male recipient [...]
Moment #21: Tim Hardaway tells radio host, ‘I hate gay people’
Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Basketball, 2007. Of all the homophobic actions by sportspeople in recent years, this may have been the stupidest. Just days after former NBA player John Amaechi came out of the closet, former NBA star Tim Hardaway told radio host Dan Le [...]
Rick Welts resigns as Phoenix Suns president
Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts, who came out of the closet in May, has resigned as president of the Phoenix Suns. Welts told The Arizona Republic he is leaving to pursue a romantic relationship in Sacramento. The most important thing for me is to get my personal and professional lives better aligned. They’ve probably never been [...]
Moment #46: NBA fines Kobe Bryant $100k for using the word ‘faggot’
Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. NBA, 2011. We had heard athletes use the words ‘fag’ and ‘faggot’ before. In 2006, Pittsburgh Steeler Joey Porter called Kellen Winslow a ‘fag.’ Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen use the same word that year. Detroit Lions President Matt Millen [...]
Moment #50: Rick Welts comes out
Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Basketball, 2011. It had been a long time coming for the president of the Phoenix Suns. Having worked in the NBA for decades, Rick Welts had kept his sexual orientation a secret from his colleagues for just as long. When his partner [...]
John Amaechi awarded Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth
Out former NBA player John Amaechi was awarded the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in her Birthday Honours List. It’s a big deal in Britain, handed out to a select few individuals for their chivalry. Amaechi was given the honor for his work with kids. NBA commissioner David Stern praised the honor: [...]
Mark Cuban: ‘Our fans just punked the shit out of the Miami fans’
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has been strangely silent these NBA playoffs, uncharacteristic for a guy who never hesitates to say what’s on his mind. Cuban left his self-imposed cone of silence after the Mavs won their first NBA title, beating the Miami Heat in six games. On “SportsCenter,” Cuban let fly with some profanity [...]
Dallas Mavericks win NBA title; LeBron still without a championship ring
The verdict is in on “The Decision”: TKO, Dallas in six. The Dallas Mavericks won their first NBA championship, beating the Miami Heat, 105-95, in Game 6 of the Finals. But outside of Dallas, all most people will focus on is the failure of LeBron James to win a championship the year he bailed from [...]
Steve Nash: Having an openly gay NBA player would be no big deal
In the distractions of the holiday weekend, I totally missed this Q&A in the weekend New York Times, where Phoenix Suns star Steve Nash discussed, among other things, gays in the sport. Here is one answer that caught my eye: Q. Is the N.B.A. ready for an openly gay player? Share on Facebook
NBA: Heat vs. Mavericks; NHL: Canucks vs. Bruins: Do you care who wins?
The NBA Finals (Dallas vs. Miami) tips off Tuesday, followed the next day by Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals (Vancouver vs. Boston). Both series look intriguing with some fresh faces in the Finals. For Miami and Dallas, this is their second trip each to the Finals (they played in 2006), while Boston (1990) [...]
Columnist: F-word as bad as the N-word
The recent fines in the NBA for Kobe Bryant and Joakim Noah using “faggot” has engendered a lot of talk about language and what is and isn’t a slur. Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline has a provocative column where he says that calling someone a “faggot” is the same as calling a black person a [...]