Meet the Heroes Behind the NBA’s LGBTQ Movement
Honoring the athletes who stood up for the most under-represented minority in male professional sports
IT WAS IN 2017 where the NBA’s stance on LGBTQ rights was first tested. The recently appointed commissioner Adam Silver had to take a stand.
After an arduous process, in which the city of Charlotte made its case to become the host city of the NBA All-Star Game, Silver had yet another crisis on his hands, something which he had quickly become accustomed to in his short stint as commissioner.
On the one hand, he wanted to promote the city of Charlotte, a market which the league was hoping to grow and expand, and the easiest way to do so was to have them host the All-Star weekend — with all eyes of the NBA on North Carolina. But on the other hand, Charlotte had just passed a bill that objected to all of the values — equality, individual freedom — that Silver had promoted since becoming commissioner.
With Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan and reigning MVP Stephen Curry both lobbying for the All-Star festivities to be held in Charlotte, there was growing pressure on the league to keep the games in N.C., despite the possible repercussions from fans and media. Hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line as well, which would seemingly make deciding to stay in Charlotte easy.
But for Adam Silver and the rest of the executives in the NBA, giving in to the lucrative nature of money was the wrong decision. And whether or not moving the game from Charlotte to New Orleans was an easy decision, it was most certainly the right decision.
The league objected to North Carolina’s House Bill 2, a bill that limited protection from discrimination for all LGBTQ people in the state.
And afterward, the general reception was one of disappointment for the individuals who worked so hard to get the game into Charlotte in the first place, but an understanding that equal rights and the fight against discrimination were more important than the rising business opportunity. The league, meanwhile, was heaped with praise for standing up for equal rights, especially given the financial implications.
But while Adam Silver rightfully received praise, there were players and members of the NBA before him that stood up for equal rights before the U.S. began to resemble having an aura of tolerance for LGBTQ people.
“I’M A 34-YEAR-old NBA center. I’m black,” wrote Jason Collins, in an article for Sports Illustrated back in May of 2013. At this point, he was a twelve-year NBA veteran, a two-time high school state champion, and a member of the Final Four and Elite Eight with Stanford.
“And,” added Collins, “I’m gay.”
After becoming the first active NBA player to come out as gay, Collins became the face of the LGBTQ movement in professional sports. Others have followed him — Elena Delle Donne, Diana Taurasi, and Brittney Griner among them — yet, Collins remains as the only player from the four major American sports to have come out as gay.
The reality is that, under a culture of conformity, male athletes are not put in the position to come out safely — which is what Collins looks to change. He still remembers the first time he heard a homophobic slur in an NBA locker room, saying, “it felt horrible.”
Other athletes who came out after their playing careers have described the burden of being a closeted gay male in professional sports.
“When I was younger I dated women,” wrote Collins. “I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue.”
There was nothing on the surface that made Collins appear to be different from his peers. He was the classic, hard-nosed enforcer for multiple NBA teams that played his role to the fullest. He led the league in fouls at one point, as part of his sacrifice to use his fouls to protect his more talented teammates.
When he signed with the Boston Celtics, and later after being traded to the Washington Wizards, Collins wore the number 98 as a tribute to a fallen member of the LGBTQ society.
In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally kidnapped and tortured; he died five days after being found.
Now, Collins works with many organizations and the NBA itself to further promote diversity and equality within professional sports.
“Pro basketball is a family,” wrote Collins in his last words in his SI feature. “And pretty much every family I know has a brother, sister or cousin who’s gay. In the brotherhood of the NBA, I just happen to be the one who’s out.”
REGGIE BULLOCK RAMPED up his offseason workouts, hoping to get more opportunities on a veteran-laden L.A. Clippers squad in the upcoming 2014–2015 season. His plans came to a screeching halt when he received the news that would change his life.
The headlines were out: Mia Henderson, the sibling of Reggie Bullock, was murdered after being repeatedly stabbed in a Baltimore alley.
Bullock learned about the tragedy via text message. The details were brutal. Wounds to the back, the arms, the chest.
There were so many questions lingering in Bullock’s mind. Why her? Why was it such a brutal, violent attack? These questions only grew as Shawn Oliver, a suspect tied to the crime through DNA evidence, was acquitted of his charge of first-degree murder.
The loss was an obvious tragedy, but soon, Bullock realized there was a larger, more tragic force in play.
See, Henderson never saw one of Bullock’s games while he played three seasons of collegiate basketball. She wasn’t even a sister to Bullock — to him, Mia Henderson was Kevin, his older brother. This lack of understanding of gender identity between family members was as haunting as the violence that occurred.
In the same week that Henderson passed away, another transgender woman was murdered in the same area of Baltimore. These occurrences of brutality aren’t isolated; rather, they are what comes with the territory of being an underrepresented and unprotected minority. These transgender individuals are subject to harassment and even violence the same way African-American males are subject to police brutality.
When he tweeted in the wake of Henderson’s death, Bullock quickly received blowback for saying #RIPKEVIN. Some would take this criticism personally — after all, nobody truly understands the intimate bonds between siblings — but Bullock to the criticism to heart. He needed to be better — not just for himself, but to honor the sibling he felt he didn’t protect.
“Physically her body can’t be here,” he said in reflection. “[But] physically my body is here — and I can stand up for something that she believed in.”
When Bullock looked for help, Erika Swilley, the Pistons’ senior director of community and social responsibility with over 13 years of experience, was quick to come to his aid. Together, they worked with the league to bring awareness to a minority of society that remains underrepresented.
Unlike the issues of racial inequality or police brutality, most NBA locker rooms have no connection to the issue of LGBTQ rights. It’s like a foreign language to them, words that are never spoken, undermined even in the era of “locker room talk.”
And all of this makes Bullock’s efforts — as a straight, African-American male — that much more meaningful.
The Detroit Pistons had a Pride Night during Bullock’s tenure with the team, largely to his and Swilley’s efforts. After the game, Bullock told his story as part of a larger panel promoting equality across genders.
In early 2018, during a season-opening victory, GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group, announced the confirmation of a $25,000 donation from Bullock. Later, as part of GLAAD’s Spirit Day, Bullock shared his messages of equality and the story of his lost sister with his thousands of fans on social media.
And when the NBA took a rainbow-colored float to New York City’s LGBTQ Pride March, Bullock, along with commissioner Adam Silver and Jason Collins, were at the forefront of it all.
“Defiantly Different” read the words on the float. And indeed, in a world of sports where conformist, misogynistic culture is the pervasive norm, Bullock is a hero for the LGBTQ community by telling his story — as a straight man who has lived the life of a traditional NBA athlete being an advocate for LGBTQ rights.
IN HIS 2007 memoir titled Man in the Middle, John Amaechi, a relatively obscure NBA player, made headlines and brought his name into the center of the sports world.
He became the first gay male to have played in the NBA, announcing his sexuality after retiring from a short NBA career.
Among the members of the league that Amaechi criticized were the Utah Jazz — most notably, he called out legendary NBA forward Karl Malone for being xenophobic and describing Jerry Sloan as a “bigot.”
Based on the experience of Amaechi and many other closeted athletes who didn’t come out until after their playing careers, being an LGBTQ individual and a member of a professional sports team are diametrically opposed.
Thankfully, there is still hope for improvement, even based off of Amaechi’s accounts from over a decade ago, when the socio-political climate of the country was vastly different.
In his memoir, Amaechi speaks highly of Greg Ostertag, a veteran on the early Jazz teams that faced off against Michael Jordan in multiple NBA Finals, even stating that Ostertag was the first to ask if Amaechi was gay (his response: “You have nothing to worry about, Greg”)
He also writes highly of a teammate whom he refers to as Malinka, meaning “little one” in Russian. “Malinka” was actually defensive specialist Andrei Kirilenko, a fan-favorite player on the mid-2000s Jazz teams. On one occasion, Kirilenko sent an invitation to a New Year’s Party that read, “Please come, John. You are welcome to bring your partner if you have one, someone special to you. Who it is makes no difference to me.”
Now, Amaechi runs Amaechi Performance Systems (APS), a psychological services and management training firm. He works with businesses to create an inclusive, optimized work environment where all employees feel at home — the same feeling he so desperately longed for in the world of professional sports.
THE ISSUE OF LGBTQ rights not being recognized may never go away in society. Compounding this issue is the fact that professional sports are at times a microcosm of the worst, most conformist behaviors of traditional society.
Because, when teams make a post dedicated to “Pride Night” or equality, their messages are usually drowned out by the overwhelming amount of fans who do not agree with LGBTQ rights.
Even Dwyane Wade, one of the league’s most popular players for years, has gotten consistent harassment for raising a transgender child, who changed her name from Zion to Zaya. There may be no true solution to this problem for years to come — as of now, it appears that being a popular male athlete in one of the four major professional sports and being gay are not compatible.
But who knows, with enough powerful voices speaking, anything can happen. One day, maybe a closeted athlete will truly feel like part of “the NBA brotherhood” — whether or not he is straight.
