Mark Cuban has predicted the National
Basketball Association (NBA) will see its first openly gay player in
the next 3-5 years, gay weekly The
Dallas Voice reported.
Cuban, the owner of the Dallas
Mavericks, made his comments during a telephone interview with
celebrity site TMZ.com.
Cuban said an openly gay player was
more likely in the near future than a female head coach in the NBA.
When host Harvey Levin asked, “What's
going to happen first, an openly gay player in the NBA or a female
coach?” Cuban answered: “An openly gay player.”
“You think it's going to happen
soon?”
“I think within the next three to
five years absolutely,” the gay-friendly Cuban replied.
“Is there talk about that, where
people are saying, 'Hey, we've got to stop this kind of image that we
have that we're intolerant.' Are people talking about that within
teams?”
“Not so much, because I don't think
there's really the perception that we are intolerant. I think the
only issues we've had is with some fallback and some old-school type
language that's derogatory to gays. So there are certain words that
I think were accepted 5 or 10 years ago that guys are starting to
recognize you can't use any longer, and that hasn't been a problem.
So I think it will be more of a media sensation when somebody comes
out than it will be a player issue.”
(Related: NBA
bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.)