Throughout
the U.S. millions of people, even those with no previous interest in
basketball, have been remarking on the significance of Collins’ revelation,
and rightfully so. Jason Collins is now
a trailblazer. Well, not a Trailblazer,
he’s still a free agent although I’m sure he’d sign with Portland if they want
him, but why would they with J.J. Hickson and an up-and-coming Meyers Leonard
already on their roster? But anyway, you
know what I mean. Collins has placed
himself at the vanguard of the gay rights movement, a beacon of hope to
extremely tall gay children everywhere.
He is now a civil rights icon, with an impact that will echo throughout
history.
I just hope that Collins’
newfound fame doesn’t overshadow the contributions of the civil rights pioneers
who came before him. People often forget
that basketball, having been invented at a YMCA in Massachusetts, used to be an
exclusively homosexual sport. Teams of
sweaty men wearing color-coordinated outfits consisting of sleeveless shirts
and shorts as tight as saran wrap, running up and down the court whilst showing
off their ball-handling skills. It truly
was a sport for men. Men’s men, if you
know what I mean (I mean homosexuals). It
wasn’t until 1956 that Jiminy Carbunkle became the first heterosexual allowed
to play in the NBA. Controversy and conflict
ensued. Teammate Fat "Sweetwater" Lipton refused to take the court alongside Carbunkle. Carbunkle was inundated with
hate mail laced with such devastating insults as “woman lover,” “breeder,”
“lady toucher,” and “breast enjoyer.” On
one infamous road trip through the Midwest, fans in Fort Wayne, Indiana
tormented him by throwing novelty rubber vaginas at him during the pre-game
introductions. Things got even worse in St. Louis, where a group of heterophobic pastors demanded that Carbunkle
undergo aversion therapy to cure him of his heterosexual affliction. It was only St. Louis star power forward
Lavender Dempsey’s timely intervention that convinced the enraged crowd of
straight-hating Baptists to let Carbunkle go safely back to his hotel room. The press, as insatiable in its need to stir
up gossip then as it is now, relentlessly hounded Carbunkle about his love life. For his family’s protection, he had to hide
the true nature of his relationship with his wife and child when they joined
him on the road. When asked, he would
claim that his wife was actually his personal trainer and his 9 year old son
was actually his dwarf valet. Teammates
“Jumpin” Whit Hogarth and Bruce Pepperton selflessly volunteered to convey the
appearance that the trio was involved in a passionate, satisfying, and depraved
polyamorous relationship to throw people off the scent of Carbunkle’s
heterosexuality, but Carbunkle nobly refused to live a lie. His career would suffer greatly for his
integrity.
In the late 1950s there was
a pernicious yet regrettably widespread belief that the sweat of heterosexuals
caused gay people to develop cancer. Carbunkle
was forced to play wearing a full body wetsuit lest he sweat his fellow players
into an early grave. The bulkiness of
the suit severely hindered Carbunkle’s usefulness on the court and his career
prematurely fizzled out. His last
appearance was Game 6 of the 1963 NBA Finals in which he played 2 minutes,
amassing 0 points, 0 assists, and 2 death threats. The next year a team of nuclear physicists at
MIT demonstrated that the perspiration of heterosexual humans was harmless to
gay mice. After a decade of trials on
humans, the destructive rumor was finally put to rest, much too late to help
out Carbunkle.
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