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For example, Durant in 2013 voiced his support of Collins, but he also made graphically homophobic comments in 2021. Not coincidentally, Jason Collins became the first active NBA player to come out as gay in 2013, raising significant awareness of LGBTQ issues - and the presence of gay players - in the NBA.Īttitudes have seemed to change over the years. Of the 78 homophobic tweets, 70 were sent from 2009 to 2013. This tweet by Durant from 2009, when he played for the Oklahoma City Thunder, got over 7,500 retweets and over 6,600 likes and was still on his timeline as of noon Pacific time March 4, when it was removed. Most of the tweets got virtually no interaction at the time, which might explain how they have gone unnoticed until now. Of the 20 NBA teams currently in position for the playoffs, 90% of them have at least one athlete on the list of players who tweeted anti-LGBTQ language or messages (the Celtics and Bucks currently have no one on the list). The Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz each have four players on the list of NBA athletes who created anti-gay tweets, while the Chicago Bulls currently have three players who tweeted homophobic messages.įour of the players on the list - Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, Zach LaVine and JaVale McGee - represented the United States at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Patrick Beverley of the Minnesota Timberwolves, for example, tweeted “fag” 13 times in 2011, and he had been in the league since 2009. “I wanted to make sure I was rooting for the right people.”įrom his research: “Fag” showed up in 29 tweets, “gay” in 40 (and not complimentary), and the phrase “no homo” in 17. “It was the league I was most familiar with, and also my favorite to watch,” Chris said. He then spent a weekend going through every NBA roster, searching for problematic keywords in tweets. “The culture of homophobia in sports runs very deep, especially in a hyper-masculine league like the NBA.” Outsports has verified Chris’ identity, but he asked for anonymity out of fear of online attacks from fans of the players or teams.īeing a big NBA fan, Chris decided to check the accounts of some of his favorite players and found various homophobic tweets. “It was shocking but not surprising,” Chris said of the number of homophobic tweets he found. When “Chris,” a young NBA fan who is gay, saw the tweets, they saddened and angered him. I’m not for people losing their jobs, but words like that can’t be tolerated.” “It’s a slap in the face to me, to other people in my community. “I don’t care how long ago it was, it shows the person’s character, in my opinion,” said Derrick Gordon, who came out publicly as gay while playing basketball at UMass and who now plays professionally in Germany. The players include CJ McCollum, the president of the National Basketball Players Assn., who tweeted “no homo,” as well as superstar Kevin Durant, who tweeted “shut up fag boy.” While they may not reflect how these players feel about LGBTQ people today - we don’t know until they tell us - all the tweets were still active as of March 4 (some have been deleted after players became aware of this impending story, though Outsports has a screen capture of every tweet). With very few exceptions, all of these messages were sent from the players’ accounts from 2009 through 2013, in some cases years before they joined the league. These comments are among 78 tweets from 36 current and active NBA players on teams that are homophobic in language, nature or even intent (four other players were on a roster when the list was compiled last month, but they are no longer on an NBA team). The words are from more than a decade ago, but they still hurt today.