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After
making headlines — and enemies — by becoming the
first NBA player to come out, John Amaechi is trying to lose
the tag of "that gay British basketball player".
A project to give thousands of young people a better start
in life may provide a different kind of legacy. |
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In
2003 Amaechi bowed out of the NBA, returned to his native
England, focused on his charity work and seemed to disappear
from the spotlight. Now, with the release of his critically
acclaimed autobiography Man
in the Middle, Amaechi is more recognizable than he
ever was on the basketball court. |
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One night, John Amaechi went to bed a retired basketball
player, about to release his autobiography. The next morning,
he woke up emblazoned across the front pages of USA Today
and the New York Times. The news that his book would reveal
he was gay had been leaked by bloggers.
"It was a very strange experience," he says. "I
consider myself a pretty rounded guy. I've done pretty elite
things in business, sport and academics and all of a sudden
I woke up one morning and I'm a 'big, black, British, gay
guy'. That was frustrating at times."
His admission rocked sport and prompted spiteful remarks
from top players and death threats from the public, although
the response on the whole he says has been "95% positive".
Now the "craziness" has died down and he can concentrate
on making the news for other reasons. The Amaechi Basketball
Centres Foundation is about to open its second youth center
in the UK, a $16m development in Bradford. The first center,
in his home city of Manchester, opened seven years ago and
has 5,000 young people aged five to 25 attending every week.
Amaechi believes his centers are more about community-building
than sport. |
 John
Amaechi |
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 We
build community centers where you come play different sports,
you can go to a library, you can use a computer, see a counselor
— talk about anything from what you plan on doing
in the future for a job to some problems you are having
at home. It's this holistic center, this hub for the community
in Manchester. It's a pretty massive project; we plan on
building four more centers in England before 2012.
— John Amaechi |
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"A
tiny part of it is basketball-related. While I definitely
want to see the next amazing basketball player to come out
of Britain and go off to the US and play in the Olympics,
and the centers are a way to make that happen, it's only
2% of the whole."
"The most part of my interest is that young people
get to interact with peers. Not without conflict and not
without stress, because they are part of life, but within
a set of rules and organized in such a way they can learn
to interact with each other under these conditions."
The foundation's slogan is "legacy starts now"
and Amaechi is clearly a man who thinks about how he will
be remembered.
"I think when you show young people that you care and
when you build infrastructure and community and when you
allow people to experience things and grow in ways they
hadn't thought possible, that's how your legacy is built."
"My sexual orientation and the fact I played basketball
will be increasingly unimportant in the face of that." |
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At
400ft they see a big black man and they cross the road to
avoid me. At 200ft they cross back because they realize
that I'm a professional basketball player and they want
a closer look. At 50ft they recognize me as the gay bloke
who just came out and then they cross back across the road
again. One thing I've discovered is that bigots are usually
less than brave. I am 6'9", 320 lbs and black —
most people don't want to be a bigot to my face.
— John Amaechi |
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Man
in the Middle
Man in the Middle chronicles John Amaechi’s journey
from awkward, overweight English lad to jet-setting NBA star.
Along the way, he endured endless obstacles to his hoop dreams
— being abandoned by his father, being cut from his
first college team, recovering from a life-threatening injury,
playing for abusive coaches, and losing his mother —
while also protecting a vital secret that could have ended
his career: Amaechi was gay. Now in this poignant and intimate
memoir, Amaechi takes us into the hypermasculine world of
professional sports and into the very center of his soul.
As tender as it is brutally frank, Man in the Middle follows
him from the rough streets of Manchester to Penn State (where
he first achieved basketball stardom and began to recognize
his sexuality) to the cities and countries in which he played.
A moving story of adversity and diversity, and a testament
to the power of one man’s convictions and to the universal
desire to make the world a better place.
  USA UK Canada |
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Most
people associate Hill Harper with Hollywood. But he is just
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Gods of Sport |
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In 2004,
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