Editor’s Note: Isaac Humphries is a professional basketball player for Melbourne United, part of Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL). He previously played college basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.read more opinion on CNN.
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CNN
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One of the best feelings in the world is playing a professional basketball game at your best.
I can perform in front of nearly 10,000 people in one night. They’re rooting for your name and wearing your jersey. Then throw a powerful dunk and flex to the crowd.
Well, that should feel like the best thing in the world, right? And for a second, I think it was.
That was in 2020. I know he’s 22 years old and played for the Adelaide 36ers two years before he signed for his current team, Melbourne United.
Imagine what would happen if all the adrenaline was released after a match. For me, the euphoria disappeared the moment I kicked them out of the arena. I went home to my apartment in Henley Beach, a coastal suburb of Adelaide, and was alone.
I felt that I had no choice but to be alone. That’s when my wave of depression hit the hardest.
For my entire career, the reality that I could be openly gay while playing basketball never existed. until now.
I’ve played in Kentucky, the NBA, Europe, the Australian national team, everywhere, and it’s all the same. For the most part, being that level of athlete is all about making money, dating girls, and being the best basketball player you can be. Be.
So no matter how awkward and strange it felt, I got in line. I just wanted to blend in and not draw attention to myself. There were very few professional men’s basketball players doing anything else, so I knew that when I retired, my real life would begin.
My depression got so bad that the idea of not retiring became a very real possibility.
Towards the end of 2020 there was a night when my loneliness, self-loathing and shame finally took its toll and I decided it would do less harm than good to take my own life. Did. When I woke up the next morning, I realized what I hadn’t done.
It was decided to start the season as if nothing had happened. But along the way, a previous leg injury caught up with me. I was shut down for the rest of the season and most of the next season as well.
Simple things like getting up from a chair, climbing stairs, and even explosive movements during a performance became almost impossible.
Part of the fix was to follow my strength and conditioning coach, Nick Popovich, to Los Angeles to continue my rehab. But he had just landed a new gig at the University of Southern California. He’s the best in the industry, so the only way I could keep moving forward in healing my knee was to be with him.
LA has always been my favorite place in the world. In addition to my basketball career, I’m also a musician, so I’ve been really lucky to spend a lot of time there and build a network of friends and peers.
Having been in Los Angeles for many years, it was also my first experience seeing members of the LGBTQ+ community in a positive light.
Growing up in Australia, I attended an all-boys private school from around the age of 13. There was an unspoken expectation that everyone was heterosexual. That was the end of the conversation. I really didn’t have the means to throw myself into the competitive sports world I was in and meet members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Becoming a professional basketball player didn’t change the situation. LGBTQ+ In top-tier sports dominated by men, representatives were rare and generally seen as a downside of the difference. . It has unintentionally derogatory slang, ridiculing anything meant to be gay.
In LA it was completely different. I’ve been around some of the most successful people in the world, including musicians, TV and film producers, media personalities, and top-notch celebrities, and I’ve learned that being openly gay brings joy.
For the first time in my life, I saw people at the top of their game being open and honest about who they were, and that brought an instinctive, contagious sense of well-being.
So during my stay in LA to heal my injuries in 2021, I was able to experience more being around the LGBTQ+ community. It was mostly by making friends who were openly gay and who were clearly themselves.Shame was not taken into account.
I learned so much about the experiences people in our community went through and was shocked at how many stories were eerily similar to mine.
I have found that being open about who I am is the most liberating thing a person can ever do. Being gay was no longer a shame. It came with liberation.
No one hid who they were. And created the happiest, most positive environment I didn’t realize existed.
I hope it makes me a sport. We want to be a place where everyone can strive to be “great” without fear of opposition.
You can be gay and elite basketball player in one of the best leagues in the world. I am a living witness of that.
The road to get to this point in my life has been harder than it should have been, but I wasn’t going to change that for the sake of the world. , would not have been forced to discover and learn to accept.
If there are any negative aspects to my decision to come out, I take those thorns away so others don’t have to. As long as it means that we progress along the way and especially our children feel they can be whoever they want to be.
I am very lucky to be able to do this with this Melbourne United team. What says a lot about the club is that I feel very comfortable doing this with them. Let’s create an environment that welcomes .
I would also recommend a little more empathy across the board.there may be comments here and there Feelings that could be considered anti-gay may seem harmless in the grand scheme of things.
I know what it’s like to grow up in an unwelcoming environment and I want to do my part to make sure basketball isn’t like that anymore.
