It was monumental, progressive and courageous, but completely unimportant at the same time. Last week, NBA center Jason Collins became the first active professional male athlete to announce that he is gay. The act, itself, wasn’t unexpected because discussions on
It was monumental, progressive and courageous, but completely unimportant at the same time.
Last week, NBA center Jason Collins became the first active professional male athlete to announce that he is gay. The act, itself, wasn’t unexpected because discussions on the subject have moved from if to who and when over the past few years.
While it happens to come at a time when we’re being reminded of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier, hopefully it feels similarly archaic down the road. Despite historical and contemporary evidence to the contrary, there is going to be a time when gay male athletes will be viewed as we now usually view any minority athlete – that is to say not viewed as a minority at all, but just an athlete. Robinson was once baseball’s only player of color. His race was initially his defining characteristic..
Now, race in baseball seems to be less noteworthy than it is in any major sport. Minorities are few and far between in the NHL, while the NBA has barely a dozen white American starters. White running backs or cornerbacks and black quarterbacks are still story lines in the NFL. The dominance of Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters was once compounded by the lack of diversity in their respective sports.
Scarcity is interesting. Unusual is interesting. When a stereotype is broken in sports, it will always create interest. Just ask Jeremy Lin. So at this moment in time, and into the foreseeable future, the fact that a male athlete is openly gay will be one of his defining characteristics. Collins’s sexual orientation is much more notable than his career averages of 3.6 points and 3.8 rebounds per game. The reasons Collins has remained in the league for 12 years is that he’s a 7-footer who does things usually just us basketball nerds notice, like set great picks or anchor a team’s interior defensive rotations.
Now, he’ll have a spotlight on him. It will remain on him for however much longer he decides to play, which will probably be another two or three seasons. He’ll hear some mean-spirited statements at every arena he enters, but the fact that he’s so well-liked throughout the league should alleviate some of that anxiety. Taking the full spotlight now will hopefully dim it a bit for future athletes who come out.
Just as many have said that Robinson may have been the perfect man to break the color barrier, Collins may be the perfect man to break this one. It won’t be about his on-court performance moving forward, as it was for Robinson, but more about how he’s already been here for a dozen years. He’s played for six different teams and with or against hundreds of players without issue, as coaches have deemed him an exemplary leader and teammate.
Jason Collins’s announcement shouldn’t just give us hope that we will eventually get to a point when an athlete’s sexual orientation is unimportant. It should show us that it already is.
• ‘My Thoughts Exactly’ appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays in The Garden Island. Email David Simon your comments or questions to dsimon@thegardenisland.com. Follow David on Twitter @SimonTGI
