According to Derrick Gordon, he didn’t get a fair chance at trying out for the NBA because he’s gay. He forgot the part where he’s not good enough. If Ben Simmons had released a sex tape of himself getting barebacked by Charlie Sheen the week before the draft he’d have still been selected in the top 10.
Gordon is credited as being the first openly gay men’s Division I basketball player, a dubious distinction indeed. My question is, who’s going to break down the barriers in rowing?
There are 351 Division I men’s basketball teams, with an average of 15 players on each team. Of those 5,265 players, year after year, you’re saying not one of them was openly gay? The term openly gay is not well defined. How many people are openly straight? Mostly just gay guys. Gordon may have been the first person to talk to the press about his gay personal life, but there have always been guys on teams who weren’t hiding anything. They just weren’t holding press conferences. Perhaps because it could be a distraction.
Gordon played for Seton Hall last year as a sixth year senior, having sat out two seasons because he transferred twice, which is exceptionally uncommon. That would make him a 24 year old rookie. NBA teams don’t want 24 year old rookies. They barely even want four year seniors.
His last season at Seton Hall Gordon averaged 8.0 points per game, the fifth most on his team. He played the fifth most minutes. He averaged 1.6 assists per game, as a point guard. He shot .278 percent from the three point line. He shot .587 percent from the free throw line. Any NBA scout who brought him in to work out would be awful at their job. That’s not the way Gordon sees it:
“I didn’t get a fair shot to show what I could do, it was without a doubt because of the fact that I’m gay.”
Gordon also claims to have encountered homophobia when he was selecting a college to play for:
“During the recruiting process, a number of schools didn’t want me because I’m gay.”
Maybe they didn’t want you because you’re an entitled cock who makes a lot of excuses. Being gay isn’t really a big deal anymore. You’re trying to make it one. You can’t have it both ways. It’s not the reason you didn’t get into Duke. You’re annoying.
It’s tough to find an exact comparison to illustrate how ridiculous Gordon’s claims are. Let’s look at a point guard who barely made the NBA. As an example, Ian Clark.
Ian Clark is one year older than Derrick Gordon and has already played four seasons in the league. The most minutes he has averaged per game is 8.8, and that was last season playing garbage time during Golden State blowouts.
Ian Clark was undrafted.
Like Gordon, Clark’s teams were bounced in the first round of the NCAA tournament every year. His senior year of college he averaged 18.2 points per game compared to Gordon’s 8.0. He shot .543 percent from the field compared to Gordon’s .405. He shot .459 from the three point line and .833 from the free throw line compared to Gordon’s .278 and .587. He also had more assists and steals than Gordon.
To be fair Gordon’s complaint is that he didn’t draw any interest from NBA teams because he’s gay. All he wanted was the opportunity.
So let’s look at Tyler Haws, who had a distinguished collegiate career as a point guard at Brigham Young University. Like Gordon Haws was two years older than he was supposed to be, because he went on a Mormon mission which may have ended up costing him tens of millions of dollars. I’m sure it was worth it.
Unlike Gordon, Haws took his team past the first round of the NCAA tournament. Haws averaged 21.9 points per game his senior year compared to Gordon’s 8.0, shot much better percentages all around, and had more steals, assists, and rebounds.
He drew zero interest from NBA teams and is now playing overseas.
Gordon isn’t playing overseas. He’s crying victim stateside. To state the obvious, anyone with two nipple rings is a problem individual not to mention playing basketball with nipple rings on is an awful idea for obvious reasons.
The culture of victimhood is festering out of control. These entitled millennial narcissists were raised to think they should be given everything they want, even when they clearly don’t deserve it and when they don’t get it they take to Twitter to whine about micro-aggressions.
The ironic thing is nobody really seemed to notice or care that Gordon was an openly gay college basketball player. NBA front office people weren’t looking at his Grindr profile, they were looking at his stat sheet.
He sought attention and now claims the attention he received cost him an opportunity. Remove the gay thing and replace it with whatever you want. Anyone intent on making things about themselves is going to be a bad teammate. Maybe he transferred twice because nobody liked him. You can’t have it both ways.
Maybe if you’d spent your time working on your jump shot instead of feeling sorry for yourself we wouldn’t be having this conversation.