LeBron James on John Amaechi

So, you just assume he acted in a way that would back up your argument. Like I said. A very thin branch.

 

If a woman is in a shower with me, I'm checking her out.

Ooooohhhh... what a pig I am!

 

OK....

So, then, why would a woman, say if the tennis tour was under one umbrella, object to taking a shower with men?

Don't you dare say she wouldn't.

 

It has a different meaning if you're a writer and words are your thing. If you're a regular person, not necessarily.

The trouble is, we NEVER want to give anybody the benefit of the doubt in anything they say.

It's so much easier to mock them and feel superior.

 

Some things are no one's business.

"Hey guys, great shootaround today. I like men in a sexual way."

"Hey dude with locker next to mine, I really enjoy banging women."

They play basketball together. As Shaq and Kobe (and Magic and Kareem) showed, you don't have to be buddies to play winning basketball, and you certainly don't need to share how you spend your nights.

Also, Friedman is dead on. We can't laud LeBron james for being so media savvy, and then make excuses when he says something dumb. Is his statement homophobic? I would say it's just more dumb than anything else.

"Hey man, I'm not passing you the ball unless you tell me which way you swing sexually!"

Who the hell cares what the guy does away from the court, as long as he works his ass off on it?

 

Interesting - question- is a sport writer being dishonest to their readers if they are writing a column blasting James his comments but not disclosing that they are gay themselves?

If they did disclose that little fact would it give column greater credibility?

 

Boom --
1) No.
2) Yes.
Tough decision for the columnist, though.

 

To recap. . .

We, as media, make a huge deal about a former NBA player coming out of the closet. We lead newscasts and web sites with it, write stories and columns about it, like an alien has landed in professional sports.

Yet when asked to comment on the situation, and an athlete says something other than "It's no big deal," we make a big deal out of that.

If it isn't a big deal, than why are we covering it?

And if it is a big deal, then why the moral indignation when an athlete says it is?

 

Do we know he lied about his sexuality? Did we know if teammates asked why they never saw him around women? Did he say anything more than, "I'm not interested in her, she's not my type," to teammates?

I haven't seen the interviews, and obviously none of us have read the book yet, but there are ways to give some honest answers without explicitly revealing that he's gay. Maybe he never had to go out of his way to hide it.

Just playing devil's advocate here.

 

Nice summation.

 

I was thinking that too.

And to go further who has said definitively that none of his former teammates knew? Maybe some of them wondered but never made a big deal about it, and now they've found out that he is.