What's Hot

Say It Ain’t So Timmy!

Tim Hardaway
Contributed by Ben Goldstein on 6/15/07

“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known, I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.”
-Tim Hardaway

“Finally, someone who is honest. It is ridiculous, absurd, petty, bigoted and shows a lack of empathy that is gargantuan and unfathomable. But it is honest. And it illustrates the problem better than any of the fuzzy language other people have used so far.”
-John Amaechi

“I don’t hate gay people, I’m a goodhearted person. I interact with people all the time… I respect people. For me to say ‘hate’ was a bad word, and I didn’t mean to use it.”
-Tim Hardaway

To start this article, I feel I must make a confession. Tim Hardaway, the former NBA point guard who has become a pariah in the wake of the above comments, was a hero of mine growing up. As a basketball player, there was no one I rallied behind, or tried to imitate more, than Tim Hardaway. See, I could relate to him, in a certain sense; he wasn’t tall or especially athletic, or even especially quick. What he was was a player who understood the game, who used a series of moves, an eye for the court, and a quick release to turn himself into an NBA All-Star. He just seemed to will his way to the top, and it was impressive. His team was always my team. When Hardaway was traded towards the end of his career from Golden State to Miami to (unsuccessfully) help Pat Riley bring a title to South Beach, not only did I order a new jersey pretty much the second I heard about it, but Hardaway’s Golden State #10 immediately went up on my wall, there to stay until I left for college. In my room, at my parent’s house, I still have over 100 of his basketball cards neatly tucked away.

See, Tim Hardaway is not a bad guy, or at least, I never thought he was. He contributes to numerous charities. He’s involved with a number of community projects. He was an NBA star who, until the most recent controversy, was never in the headlines for the wrong reasons - in fact, he was enough of a standup guy that ESPN tried him as a studio analyst for a year, an admittedly bad move (believe it or not, Tim Hardaway is not exactly the smoothest person in front of a microphone). Mary Buckheit, a lesbian who is employed by Hardaway’s former employers at ESPN, recently penned a column suggesting that even though he didn’t know her, Tim Hardaway hates her. I don’t think she’s right. Tim Hardaway grew up in the South Side projects of Chicago, where his dad used to show up drunk to his basketball games. Mary Buckheit grew up in Chesire, Connecticut, and I’m guessing neither of her parents were loaded when they came to her softball games. So for someone like Mary Buckheit to take those comments at face value and condemn Tim Hardaway, well, it rings a little false to me. But then there’s the problem.

See, I happen to have a good friend who is from, of all places, Chesire, Connecticut. And, just like Mary Buckheit, he is gay. He came out to our whole group of friends our junior year of college. I can remember watching him go through the transformation. I can remember how scared he was that people wouldn’t accept him, that the basic relationships in his life, the support system that he had built for himself, would just evaporate. I can recall him spending an entire summer working a job in Seattle, where he went so far as to go on dates with women just because he was worried what might happen if someone he worked with, someone who hadn’t stood with him to this point, found out that he was gay. And I remember how much it hurt me that my friend had to do all of that, to pretend he was something he’s not. So as much as I hate to do it, I, too, have to stand in the line to condemn my favorite basketball player, hell, my favorite athlete of all-time. Say it ain’t so, Timmy.

While we’re at it, I have an even better story. Unbeknownst to myself, my best friend growing up eventually came to realization that he, too, was gay. He came to the realization long after I had left town, and I never really knew him as such, and I suppose, as who he really is. In light of helping my friend from Conn. through his own realizations, it made me wonder about my friend from high school. How long had he truly known? This was someone to whom I pretty much told everything, that I really didn’t share any secrets from. Had he kept a secret from me? In Houston, Texas, it is certainly not considered socially acceptable to be gay, not on any level. Oh sure, there’s a “gay” section of town, but on the whole, but in a state which still maintains a lot of the vestiges of Jim Crow laws, openness to alternative lifestyle choices is not exactly celebrated. For a long time, I wondered why he’d never told me, even discussed it. But now more than ever, I believe I understand why. Because no matter how well he thought he knew me, no matter how liberal or open-minded I hope I seemed, I can figure out the thought process he must have been going through: what if I turned out to be, well, Tim Hardaway?

Is it even possible to reconcile such things? See, unfortunately, even as I condemn it, there is something about Hardaway’s comments that I can intellectually understand. And if you think I’m alone, you’re kidding yourself. As loud as those who have condemned Hardaway’s comments have been, if you listen carefully, there’s something even louder. That’s the thunderous silence you hear from the actual players and staff of the National Basketball League. Oh, sure, Hardaway was removed from the NBA’s promotional events, and he was fired from the CBA, all by the suits of those respective leagues. But if you pay close attention, you’ll realize that not a single person involved in the day-to-day operations of an NBA team at any level has so much as mentioned this.

You can choose to argue all you want, but if you take off the rose-colored glasses, it’s not hard to ascertain that a vast majority of players and coaches in the NBA agree with Hardaway. This is the same league that reacted to the concept of Magic Johnson on the court with HIV with threats of walkouts and boycotts (see: Malone, Karl.) By and large, the NBA is consisted of people who came from places like Hardaway, where being gay, or even being accepting of someone who is gay, is portrayed as a sign of weakness, something that marks you as someone to be prayed on. We shouldn’t be worried so much about the man himself; what we ought to be worried about is that Tim Hardaway’s comments were more likely than not an instinctual reaction, the rumblings of someone blissfully ignorant, who is merely repeating a stock phrase that he’s heard his entire life whenever the subject of homosexuality is broached.

Does Tim Hardaway really hate gay people? My strong guess is no. In fact, whether he knows it or not, I’m sure he’s been friends with gay people, interacted with them, and never cared one whit. No, when Hardaway took the mike on Dan Le Batard’s radio show, my guess is he felt he was presented with a choice: either endorse Amaechi, and by implication, homosexuality to some degree, or roundly dismiss it in the strongest terms possible. He probably felt he was living by a code he learned as a child: homosexuality is bad. Association with it is bad. And it makes others see you as lesser. So when presented with the option, Tim Hardaway simply followed those simple rules, figuring he was just saying what he was supposed to say, what 90% of the NBA would truthfully say if posed with such a question.

And there lies the larger question, the one that we should all really be asking ourselves. If Tim Hardaway had sat there and said, “You know, I think it’s great that he was able to do that, and we should all be supporting him,” what would the reaction have been? Sure, it would have failed to make national news. “Tim Bug” would still be doing NBA promotional junkets and have a job with the CBA. But that’s not what Tim Hardaway was thinking about. Tim Hardaway was thinking about what would happen the next time he was in a room with a group of NBA players, or a group of homies from his neighborhood in Chicago. Would they have questioned his manhood? Would they have wondered, aloud or no, whether an endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle meant there were some questions that needed to raised about Hardaway’s own lifestyle? The answer, unfortunately, is almost definitely.

The words of Amaechi, who certainly has far more experience here than I do, explain the situation better than I can: “I don’t need Tim’s comments to realize there’s a problem. People said that I should just shut up and go away - now they have to rethink that. His words pollute the atmosphere. It creates an atmosphere that allows young gays and lesbians to be harassed in school, creates an atmosphere where in 33 states you can lose your job, and where anti-gay and lesbian issues are used for political gain. It’s an atmosphere that hurts all of us, not just gay people.”

And Amaechi is correct, on so many levels. You meet people from different backgrounds, befriend people from different backgrounds all the time. Many of them have been tainted by the sort of societal ignorance than tainted Tim Hardaway’s upbringing. So even I wonder, sometimes, if there will be people giving me weird looks, if there are friends of mine who wonder about me because I give dating advice to a guy who is applying it to other guys. Because when ignorance is societal, there’s no real way to be sure who it might take hold of. Maybe a family member. Maybe a good friend. Maybe a childhood idol.

All of which leads me back to Tim Hardaway. I don’t want to dislike the man - I still have beautiful memories of whooping it upand going crazy when he tortured the Knicks in the ‘97 playoffs. There’s still something magical for me about the number 10, and at least until today, any time I play on a basketball team, I tried for that ten, for Tim’s number. But then I look at the top of the page. And I see those words. And I think to myself, there are times when you have to realize what’s really important. So, if there’s anyone who’d like to purchase a little over a hundred basketball cards from all the various years of Tim Hardaway’s career, well, it can be arranged. Cheaply.