(Read more on the writers blog HERE and HERE)
My idea was to write a piece about a fictitious gay NBA basketball player on the threshold of coming out of the closet. The timing seemed right as sports talking heads (1, 2, 3) and NBA power brokers are suggesting the first pro athlete playing a team sport in America will imminently be calling that press conference.
Of the 7billion human beings ambulating around our planet, there is a single leading authority on this subject, John Ekwugha Amaechi. In 2007, four years after retiring from his NBA career, John publically declared he was gay. He is the only NBA player, past or present, to come out of the closet.
John is a six-foot-nine-inch homosexual and black Englishman who played basketball in the NBA for five years. The summation of those attributes alone makes him an outlier. But there are more: he has donated millions to philanthropic causes in his hometown, received the Order of the British Empire civilian medal for being a guiding light against social inequality, and holds a PhD in psychology.
Three seconds into our interview it became evident that, as far as John was concerned, I was dead wrong about my assumption that just around the corner a pro athlete would be popping out of the closet.
Keep reading HERE.
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