Basketball - Amaechi Plans To Come Out Publicly

John Amaechi, a former NBA center, is the first NBA player to openly come out about his sexuality.

Three years after his NBA career came to end, Amaechi has admitted to being homosexual and he is the sixth professional male athlete from one of the four major US sports to discuss it.

Amaechi’s autobiography will be released on February 14, 2007 entitled Man in the Middle and it gives details about his life.

Martina Navratilova, one for the most famous openly gay athlete, has praised Amaechi’s decision to come out and she said that it was important for athletes to be open about their homosexuality since many young lesbians and gays were committing suicide. This way other youngsters would not feel alone, specially since athletes are looked upon as role models.

NBA commissioner David Stern said that a player’s sexuality was not important in NBA as they always looked to see whether a player could play or not.

While LeBron James thinks that a player who is not open about his sexuality would not survive NBA because teams were about trusting teammates and if a player does not admit he is gay, then he would not be trustworthy.

Many players were surprised at Amaechi’s admission and Orlando’s Pat Garrity said that there were bound be different reactions to this news.

Amaechi played basketball for Penn State and then went on to play 301 NBA games in five seasons. He averaged 6.2 points with 2.6 rebounds. He began his NBA career in 1995-96 with the Cleveland Cavaliers and then went to play in Europe for a few years. He then returned to NBA and played for Orlando Magic from 1999 to 2001. After that he spent 2 seasons with Utah Jazz before being traded to Houston. Houston then traded him to New York Knicks who waived him in January 2004; after which he retired.