The NBA isn’t gay enough
Kobe Bryant, Andrew Wiggins, and Ime Udoka as a lens on the sad state of masculinity.
Happy Kobe Bryant Day, everyone! Did you know it was Kobe Bryant’s birthday this week, and yesterday was Kobe Bryant Day in Los Angeles. If you didn’t know, Karen Bass says you’re going to be paying higher taxes next April. She sends her love. But also it’s not too late. You can still make the cut if you tell me where you were when you found out Kobe’s helicopter crashed. I’ll start. I was at a dog show in Chelsea New York. I remember hearing about it as soon as Abby and I left the convention center, it was a Sunday, and I had just discovered the craziest looking dogs I had ever seen. The Cane Korso. Imagine a pitbull that’s been roided up like it’s a creature in a Michael Crichton novel, and you’re halfway there. They’re the most monstrous and adorable creatures ever at the exact same time.
Now your turn, where were you when you heard about Kobe?
Okay, Ime Udoka (pictured above when he was a player). We don’t often talk about coaches here, so I’m excited we’re starting with one 2-day.
The NBA can be a mysterious league. Take the situation with Ime Udoka, the former Boston Celtics coach. Ime, who had just taken his team to the Finals, was suddenly fired by the Boston Celtics right before the 2022/23 season started, and I for one still have no idea why. At first it seemed like something pretty bad had happened, like some real-real-real foul play.
Because if he had just cheated on his spouse, that’s not the end of the world? I mean, it’s sad, but it’s not something you get fired for, is it? No, this was something else. Ime had made a female employee in the organization extremely uncomfortable — so uncomfortable that the Celtics fired him over it, whatever “it” was. But we have no idea what “it” was. I just searched for “it” again, like I do every so often because it’s so mysterious.
There’s no definitive information. The lips of the league and the media that covers it are sealed on this one.
Okay, but why. Did he make a female employee uncomfortable or did he like make her UNCOMFORTABLE? I think we have a right to know. Because right now Ime is the new head coach of the Houston Rockets, a team of very young players, who are going to be looking up to him for guidance, and then using that guidance to comport themselves when they’re on Tinder and Raya and Bumble. So if Ime did something bad-bad, I think we, as an NBA watching audience, and especially the women who go on dates with the young men he’s coaching, have the right to know what that is.
Then there’s last year’s Andrew Wiggins situation. Last year, during the middle of the Golden State Warriors season, Wiggins, one of their best players, disappears off the team for 23 games. No one in the media tells us why, though it was understood that the Warriors knew why, and were OK-cool with it. I’m into privacy, and think players should have the same rights to privacy that any of us have when we want to take 50 days off of work, especially when it comes to serious life matters, and god forbid tragedy, which apparently the Andrew Wiggins situation might’ve been? But the point here is not needing to know exactly why Wiggins had taken a leave of absence from the team, but trying to figure out why it’s so hard for me to trust the team when they tell me that he did. The spin cycle is so crazy in the NBA that it’s just hard to believe anything these teams are saying.
Let’s keep going. The other day some podcaster made a quip about something or other having to do with gay players in the NBA. Apparently it’s an open secret that there are more than a few in the league. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, they certainly weren’t rude about it, they were just “curious,” you know, as two straight white guys might be; about whom the gay players in the NBA might be. For entertainment value, you know, they thought it could be fun to know. Well I agree, it would be nice to know that, though I expect my reasons for wanting to know are different than theirs.
See, I think it’s ridiculous that it has to be kept a secret in the first place. That in today’s modern NBA, the NBA, the supposedly most liberal sports league in America can’t be transparent about who its gay players are, that’s hilarious to me. But it’s also kinda sad. It’s sad because what it says about masculinity is sad. What’s so hard about openly acknowledging your gay players; what is this Russia?
So let’s get back to Andrew Wiggins, and Ime Udoka, and Kobe Bryant for that matter.
I suspect that Wiggins really had somewhere important to be last season, but what if the reason Andrew Wiggins had to leave the team for 23 games last season is because his lover had an accident? And what if his lover was a man? What if, hypothetically, I wasn’t wrong? Could the Golden State Warriors even be honest about it?
What if Ime Udoka was harassing a male employee and not a female employee?
Or, what if because of the NBAs weirdness/fear/panic around masculinity, coaches like Ime Udoka, who get fired for making women “uncomfortable,” are getting passes for being assholes, or even (god forbid) abusive? What if the details of their ass-hole-ness were brought to light and publicly discussed? Wouldn’t we all be better off for it? Wouldn’t there be less damage and pain in the world? Less situations like this one with Miles Bridges.
Or what if players like, gasp, Kobe Bryant, whose hotel incident is still just as mysterious today as it was back in 2003, had to answer publicly for what they did before their stories get swept under the carpet, and lost in the sands of time? Imagine the power of that kind of message.
All this shit is connected and the NBA has a lot of work to do if it wants to teach its players and its teams about how to be better men. It starts with these mega old ideas around masculinity that seem to protect pieces of shit who do terrible things to women.
So get comfortable with yourself, NBA. Go to a gay bar, spend some time in Fire Island, or Provincetown, or West Hollywood. Watch some gay porn or the Birdcage for the love of Mike Pence. We shouldn’t have to think it’s funny to know who the gay players in the league are. It should all be out in the open.
Warmly,
BBF
Remember to let me know where you were the day Kobe’s helicopter went down. I really want to know. And while you’re at it, what’s your favorite dog breed?
And thanks to the following for inspiring me this weeeeeek. Over and out.