Gay ex-NBA player Amaechi: What Kobe said just as bad as ‘the N-word’

John Amaechi played five seasons in the NBA (between 1995-2003), becoming the first mainstream pro athlete to come out as being gay when he wrote his book Man in the Middle, in 2007. Today he discussed the brouhaha over Kobe Bryant’s fine by the NBA for slinging a homophobic slur at a ref on Tuesday. It’s too bad we don’t have more current or former pro athletes to go to when topics like this come up, and therein lies the problem.

Amaechi, to USA Today:

“I’m surprised that people are surprised. This is common language when I played. It was an everyday word that I heard. I haven’t seen anything new put in place (by the NBA) to tackle homophobia. There’s no reason for it to somehow get better.

“The problem we have now is because of the way we don’t address homophobia, the ultimate insult to a man is to tell them either they’re like a woman or worse, that they’re gay.

“We have to take it as unacceptable as a white person screaming the N-word at a black person. … I can tell you that I’ve been called a f——- fairly routinely, and yet people seem to hold off on calling me the N-word. We’ve got to mirror that progress.”

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Gay ex-NBA player Amaechi weighs in on Bryant, ‘apology’ for slur [USA Today]