Cause Célèbre

“NBA Player Comes Out” was the headline followed by this picture:

Despite following professional basketball to a moderate degree, I have to admit that I wasn’t sure who that was, despite his playing in the NBA for 12 years.

“Historic decision”, “courageous”, and “milestone” are just a few of the ways that Jason Collins’ announcement that he is gay has been described by media outlets. Really?  How short our memories are.  It was just six years ago that John Amaechi announced that he was gay.  According to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, "In the four major sports, he's the first one, the first one as an active player. Not after retirement but as an active player to acknowledge he's gay. So it is a courageous step.”

Hold up there, Wolf.  Perhaps you are not an avid basketball follower, but Jason Collins is far from an active player. Technically, yes, he is currently on a team. His one-year, league-minimum contract will not officially expire until July, but let’s not pretend his career wasn’t over before he made this announcement. He played in only 38 games this season and amassed a whopping 1 point and 1 rebound per game. What may be most surprising is that those totals are not much lower than his career averages. He was still in the league for one reason, and it’s that he’s seven feet tall. As the saying goes, you can’t teach height, and the NBA is the one place where a player like Hasheem Thabeet gets chance after chance after chance.

Before this announcement, Collins’ claim to fame could be found here:

I don’t really care that Jason Collins is gay. I don’t think a person’s sexual life is anyone’s business and shouldn’t define them, but if all of this hoopla is going to occur, how about we reserve it for someone we’ve seen before? You know, someone whose career wasn’t exceeded by the likes of Kurt Nimphius, Blair Rasmussen, Kevin Kunnert or any number of players who averaged at least 4 points per game for their career.

I’ll be honest, what Collins did cannot be easy to do. It does take a certain amount of courage, but this is a player who was barely hanging on in the league.  If anything, this announcement may have helped him get a final one-year, league minimum contract. But in all likelihood, he was done anyway. It would be a much tougher decision for someone who was actually in the spotlight and had their entire career ahead of them. That may actually deserve the term “historic.” What Collins has done is no different than what Amaechi did six years ago. The problem here is not Collins’ announcement, but the overhyping the media has given it. Read over this article and this one to see how over-the-top some of the reporting has gotten. I kid you not, several outlets have actually compared Collins to Jackie Robinson as a trailblazer.

I can’t believe that they get a pass for being so disrespectful to Robinson.  If any writer (or their editor) allows such a comparison to appear on their pages, they really need to go back and study the history of what Robinson had to endure. There have been gay athletes in the past and they were able to conceal it from their teammates and the public. That was their decision. Robinson did not have that choice. Jackie Robinson truly was “Historic” and “Courageous.”