Basketball

Dirk Nowitzki I am a fan of Deadspin, read it daily and often find stories for this site on stuff they've run. But they are really reaching with an item today with the headline: "Did Dirk Nowitzki Shout A Homophobic Slur After Hitting The Shot That Locked Up Tonight’s Mavericks Win?" Here is the item […]

The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement adds sexual orientation protection to its non-discrimination, the league has said. According to Michael Bass, NBA Senior Vice President, Marketing Communications: Non-discrimination language was added into the agreement that protects players from discrimination, including based on sexual orientation. The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement adds sexual orientation protection to […]

My latest piece picked up by the Huffington Post is a column about why Rick Welts’ hiring by the Golden State Warriors is the most important gay sports moment this year: While people focus on the travails of athletes, the real power brokers in sports are the guys Welts works with every day. And they've […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Sherri Murrell is a trailblazer in college basketball, living her life openly in Div. 1.

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 […]

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 […]

If you saw overtime of the Bulls-Heat game last night, I’m wondering if you saw what I saw: Big trouble for the rest of the NBA. Last summer LeBron James talked about winning five…six…seven titles with the Miami Heat. At one point they hovered around .500 and everyone laughed. But that overtime last night was […]

Former Villanova basketball player Will Sheridan, who graduated four years ago, is only the second former Div. 1 male basketball player to publicly come out of the closet as gay.

The top two NBA franchises for several years have been the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. Now both teams are down, 0-2. While the Celtics had won their first three games against the LeBron James and the Miami Heat this season, they’ve lost their far more important last three games against them. The […]

The biggest news since we last checked in with Kobe Bryant might be that Bryant allegedly told ESPN reporter Lisa Salters he used to beat up kids for teasing gay students, and that he intends to do more on the issue. From Towleroad: I used to beat up a lot of kids even in high […]

Connecticut beat Butler, 53-41, in an NCAA tournament final that set men’s college basketball back 60 years. It figures that a game pitting the Bulldogs against the Huskies turned out to be a dog. The 53 points by Connecticut was the fewest for a champion since 1949, while Butler's 41 was the lowest since 1950, […]

VCU coach Shaka Smart Only two people out of 5.9 million people in ESPN'S NCAA men's basketball pool correctly picked the Final Four: Connecticut (3 seed), Kentucky (4), Butler (8) and Virginia Commonwealth (11). One of them was so bad in their other picks that they stand around 6,000. But Joe Pearlman, an I.T. worker […]

I haven’t paid much attention to the NCAA tournament this year; The decline in talent, poor officiating and lack of compelling storylines just left me disinterested. But I got a lot more interested this morning when I saw BYU lost last night! For the last two weeks we've had endure columns praising BYU for "standing […]

Ryan Kopacsi Virginia Commonwealth is one of the surprise teams in the NCAA men's basketball Sweet 16, having been one of the final entries into the expanded field. VCU also has a pep band that goes to every game with a band leader, Ryan Kopacsi, who likes to do a partial strip, not a surprise […]

I did not watch any regular season men’s college basketball but did watch a fair amount of the tournament the past four days. I had not realized the quality of the sport had dropped so much. Jay Bilas on ESPN said it is one of the weakest fields he’s seen in years, owing to college […]

Outsports has set up a pool for the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. Fill out your bracket and see how you do against other Outsports readers. We are using CBS Sportsline this season. For the first two rounds, you will get the seed of the winner added to your points, which will reward correct upset […]

We hear it every time this year. Waaaaah. Waaaaaaaaaaaah. All the way from Bristol, Conn., the rest of the country can hear Dick Vitale and countless other commentators whining because so-and-so didn’t get into the men’s basketball tournament…despite the NCAA adding three more spots this year! You can see Vitale’s annual whining fit after the […]