Ballin'

How to Spot a Gay NBA Baller
(And Win a Million Dollars)

By Randy Boyd
For Outsports.com

Those clever TV execs. They just can’t resist passing the blunt around the boardroom and coming up with more and more “wild and outrageous” reality shows. Only last month, we had the highly rated, back to back finales of The Littlest Groom and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé. Now we’re blessed with Forever Eden, Dream Job, The Apprentice, and Playing It Straight.

Straight? That one caught our eye at Ballin’ headquarters. Finally, a show about kissing ass in a much sexier way than those kids groveling all over Trump’s Tower.

The gist: About a dozen bachelor hunks woo one bachelorette hunkette in traditional Elimidate fashion, or something like that. The catch (and the bachelorette hunkette is aware of this): half the hunks are homos. If the last man standing in this little love war is hetereo (in other words, he needs, on average, twice as much liquor and/or drugs before having sex with another man), the happy straight couple splits a million dollars and returns home knowing they can marry in any United State they choose and live happily ever after. Or split up after they’ve cashed in on fifteen minutes of buzz. But if her choice for True Love is an undercover circuit boi, the breeders get zip, the homo gets the entire mil and the homo’s travel agent, dealer, dear old mother and boyfriend du jour are all screaming jackpot!

That got us thinking ... (hoop segue)

What if Fox, or ESPN or whomever had an NBA version of this whacky new unscripted series. Perhaps they could call it Playing It Straight, or Posterizing Point Guards Post Game with Your Penis? Or Playing It Straight, or Driving Down the Lane of Love and Having to Pick Hair Outta Your Teeth Afterwards? Or Playing It Straight, or Fooling the World with that Magical Smile? 

What a concept. Some lucky SOB gets to date a dozen NBA players of all races, sizes and positions over a short but intense period of time, a time in which they all stay in a beautifully landscaped mansion nestled in picturesque hills that are alive with cameras capturing your every twitch as you flirt with, ball with, barbeque with, fight over Playstation with, and generally hang with the playas, knowing that you get to pick one playa in the end who is either straight—in which case you’re a big fat obnoxious loser—or, the playa is as gay as you are and you’ve just won a prize mo’ better than anything ever bestowed on Richard Hatch or that queer twosome on The Amazing Race.

It could happen. All it would take is a few more triggers to tip the scales. A couple of years of homos marrying in Massachusetts without the whole state collapsing into third-world status. A masculine character or two on Will and Grace. A little more blunt in the boardrooms at Fox or ESPN. A few more freaky reality shows with dwarfs and elephant dung—or that “She Bang” Asian kid from Berkeley on American Idol—to the raise the bar a little higher.

Then, of course, you’d need at least half a dozen current NBA players who are secretly willing to come out as being in favor of an expansion franchise in someplace like Provincetown or the Castro. OK, six playas coming out in unison might seem like the most impossible link in the chain, but admit it, 10 years ago, did you ever think you’d be watching television and hear an announcer tell you: “Littlest Groom, followed by Big Fat Wedding”?

It’s coming, folks. Playing It Straight, or Privately Wishing Your Team’s Scantily Clad Chick Dancers Were Replaced by the Men of Colt?

Some of you may scoff. But one day, one of you may thank Ballin’—and we do mean financially!— when you read on, and because of us, find yourself bling blinged beyond belief.

Here now, tips in case you’re ever a contestant on a dating reality show in which you must be able to tell whether or not an NBA player is straight or gay:

--Add up the number of different women who know him as “Baby Daddy.” Add that number to the number of actual kids he’s fathered. Add to that, the number of paternity suits slapped on him, but subtract any lawsuits brought by women who have had any acting experience as far back as high school. Take the new number you come up with and divide it by 2 if the playa is from the ’hood, but divide the number by 3 if he’s from the suburbs (earlier training in sophisticated cover-ups). The players with the higher final totals are more likely to be the ones you want to spend less time kissing to find out if they kiss like a straight man or gay man. They’ll be the straight ones, and if by some strange twist of fate they’re not, they’ll be too busy with ball and rugrats to pay much attention to dribbling all over you.

--If the playa on the show is from Europe, assume that he is at least bi. He may not actually be bi, but there’s a good chance that he was once young and poor on the streets of Prague or Warsaw or some Ukraine countryside. These places may not be Santa Monica Boulevard, but tall, skinny boys with hunger in their bellies are no strangers to the kindness of married men looking for what their wives can’t or won’t give them. Also, if a European baller mentions that Asian baseball player who was once so desperate for a job, he turned to gay porn, tell him your real name is Kristen Bjorn.

--In the one-on-one dates with your playas, constantly bring up Chris Webber’s name and wait to see if, even just once, the playa’s eyes widen with just a hint of school girl giddiness. If C-Webb is one of the contestants, just get him high. You’re bound to have a good time and find out which box he checks on the sexual census.

--If the playa makes any mention of the Martha Stewart trial and verdict, well, you can figure that one out for yourself.

--If any of the playas has ever thrown a press conference to announce that he is “not gay,” the red light around the backboard of your mind should go off immediately. Pay particular attention to what he actually says in his announcement. “I’m not gay” could mean “I’m not gay because I don’t have eight different online screen names, all of them featuring some variation of the word jock.” Or if he announces, “I date women and hope to have a family someday,” understand that could mean, “I’m trying my best to take it to the hole, but I’m not sure I can slam dunk night after night for the rest of my life.” Then, of course, there’s the old reliable, “People assume things because you talk a certain way or take care of your grooming or don’t mind showing your sensitive side.” Which really means, “You believe Eric McCormack of Will and Grace when he says he’s straight, why can’t you believe me?”

--And finally, keep in mind that there’s a much higher percentage of gay, bi and down-lo ballers on Western Conference teams than their counterparts in the East (and that disparity will only grow next year when the Charlotte Bobcats join the league and the New Orleans Hornets move to the West). Why, you ask, is the Western Conference populated with more homo hoopsters? After careful scientific research, Ballin’ has come to the conclusion that the overwhelming number of gay men on the ’net in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area are responsible. Both homoworlds are filled with millions of gay Internet cruisers using billions of screen names and they’re all only a fast break away from West Coast ballers looking for a different kind of back court press. Of course, the NBA playas benefiting most from this phenomenon are the ones who look more like Brad Miller and Luke Walton, and less like Elton Brand or Yao Ming, because as we all know, it helps to score online when you can still pass GO after reading, NO BLACKS, NO ASIANS, WHITE AND LATIN ONLY.

There you have it. And good luck to the lucky SOB who gets to date a dozen jocks on the first installment of Playing It Straight, or Bending It with Butt Boys?

Meanwhile, on to the second installment of a new Ballin’ feature, one that will also help the gay man trying to figure out who in the NBA slaps ass out of sportsmanship or pure enjoyment.

Who’s Not Gay ...

Jason Kidd, New Jersey Nets: True, the stellar point guard is from the Bay Area and was exposed to liberalism at Berkeley, but he wasn’t at Cal long enough and there’s nothing in his speech pattern that says, “I watched Sex and the City for the outfits.” Plus, with the exception of that black kid on Real World Seattle, gay men just don’t hit women. Jason Kidd. Not Gay.

Randy's Outsports archive

Feb. 27, 2004