It's interesting how one day you can be a retired journeyman NBA player who no one is talking about to becoming the center of a media storm and very public debate over whether or not a gay athlete should come out. That is what John Amaechi has accomplished in the five days since becoming the first NBA player to acknowledge his homosexuality.
Amaechi's memior, "Man in the Middle," will be released tomorrow and he tells the Associated Press that he has been deluged with phone calls and e-mails from friends and supporters. But Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers, who coached Amaechi in Orlando, has been the only one from the league to reach out to him.
''I've just been caught up in the whirlwind at the moment,'' says Amaechi, who hopes his coming-out would be a catalyst for intelligent discourse. He took a measured approach to NBA players' reactions: ''I think they illustrate the diversity of opinion. Some of them illustrate a great deal of naiveté and anoversimplification of the issue. And some of them don't speak with much thought at all. But there are some really well-spoken, provocative things that people have said that are positive. And they should be added to the conversation.''
Amaechi's also listened to some criticize him for coming out now, rather than when he was a player. ''I know that perhaps that would have been more impactful,'' he said, but added he was afraid to have his dream of playing in the NBA taken away: "I worked really hard to get where I was. I started playing basketball when I was 17 in a country that doesn't play basketball. I was a fat kid that sat in the corner of the library, and six years later I was starting for the Cleveland Cavaliers. I left my family, my mother, when she was very sick with cancer, to do this thing. I thought I deserved to have my full shot at being a part of the NBA.''
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had supportive words for Amaechi in an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: ''When you do something that the whole world thinks is difficult and you stand up and just be who you are and take on that difficulty factor, you're an American hero no matter what. 'That's what the American spirit's all about, going against the grain and standing up for who you are, even if it's not a popular position.''