STREAM EXCLUSIVE ORIGINALS

An Untied Tongue's Open Letter To Amar'e Stoudemire

Don’t drop the...

Soap has always been the way to get clean. After the shower, you dry off, and get on with whatever it is that needs to get done. Unless you are serving a bid in a maximum security prison, I can’t imagine how one could have the time to coordinate a route to avoid someone whose sexual proclivity involves the same sex. Does one even get paid to shower post game? Is it a contractual obligation? 

You have been taking communal showers with gay men for as long as you dribbled a ball competitively, it may have been unbeknownst to you then, but as a grown man and as a former NBA All-Star it should not be a concern. With a seven foot plus wingspan, as one of my colleagues always says, “you can do better, reach higher.”

Unfortunately, what bothers me most about your “joke” is how tireless the athletic set lives for designer this and that. From fragrance to fabric, a gay man is all over you. That is the bare truth. Candor is supposed to be refreshing, never repugnant and reductive. 

Choosing a public platform to be baited and laughed at surely wasn’t your intent. Yet you still find the time to think about a non-existent threat while living in Jerusalem. The over-all goal of any public figure is to instill hope in the public, especially when the concerns of the world are more pressing than the insecurities of a naked man. 

It’s best to leave the jokes to comedians who sell out MSG and respect the value of a team. Instead of worrying, or joking of dropping the soap you might end up dropping the ball and paying a $50,000 fine from a twitter taunt. Nothing great comes from a hypothetical, especially when you make the same ignorant mistake twice. 

Latest News

Subscribe for BET Updates

Provide your email address to receive our newsletter.


By clicking Subscribe, you confirm that you have read and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You also agree to receive marketing communications, updates, special offers (including partner offers) and other information from BET and the Paramount family of companies. You understand that you can unsubscribe at any time.