Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard was the target of gay slurs uttered by fans after Portland’s 108-107 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves Monday night.
According to ESPN, Lillard confirmed that two people yelled the gay slurs outside of the arena as he was headed to the team bus, calling the fans “disrespectful.”
It’s not often we hear stories about athletes in the United States being called gay slurs. While the chanting of slurs and other anti-gay messages has been a common practice for years in places like Europe, in the U.S. it seems to be pretty rare (outside of Mexico fans chanting the gay slur “puto” during soccer matches and NFL games).
It will be up to the Timberwolves and Target Center management to investigate the incident, identify the perpetrators and ban them from the venue. This type of language has a long, dark history in sports and there has to be a zero-tolerance policy.
For the record, Lillard has never given any indication that he is gay, and he has a girlfriend. So as far as we know this was two fans using a gay slur to demean a straight athlete. Lillard is a devout Christian with a Bible passage tattooed on his arm that talks about wrongdoers withering like grass. Hopefully he means jerks like these two fans.
