On Thursday, guard Derrick Gordon will step on the court at the Pepsi Center as the lone senior on a Seton Hall team with Final Four dreams. Sure, he’s making history. Gordon will be the first openly gay player to play in the NCAA Tournament. But, it’s not nearly the big story it would have been in years past.
That’s a sign of growth in 2016. That’s exactly how Gordon wants it, too. He knows some consider him a trailblazer and perhaps a hero. But on the heels of Seton Hall’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2006, Gordon’s biggest role is being the Pirates’ leader, not leading a movement.
“It’s always going to be a story until somebody else does it. I’m the only one right now in college basketball. I really don’t mind,” Gordon, 24, said Wednesday. “I just hope one day when somebody else comes out that it’s not as big of a deal as when I came out. It’s 2016, my teammates are the perfect example that it’s all about basketball with us.”
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Gordon spoke in front of three reporters in the Pirates locker room at Pepsi Center with a tone of indifference and a few shrugs.
There wasn’t a plethora of cameras and national media outlets following him. Gordon had already done the hectic circuit in April 2014, when he announced he was gay while a student at the University of Massachusetts. His announcement was somewhat lost coming shortly after former Missouri football player Michael Sam revealed he was gay before the NFL combine in February 2014.
Soon after, Gordon decided he wanted to transfer. He spent his freshman year at Western Kentucky, then transferred to Massachusetts. Then, after announcing he was gay, he moved on to Seton Hall in his search for a more high-profile program near his home in New Jersey.
“It’s been such a blessing having him here. Our guys accepted him right away. I mean, it was such a nonfactor for me. It was a nonfactor for our guys. It was a nonfactor for Seton Hall University,” Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said. “It just shows you what a great place it is to go. It was so supportive for him, I think it made the transition so easy.”
Wade Davis, a former NFL cornerback and executive director of the You Can Play Foundation, revealed he was gay 11 years after his playing days ended and is one of Gordon’s mentors.
“Derrick’s story debunks the myth that athletes are not accepting and are more homophobic than the general population,” said Davis, a graduate of Overland High School in Aurora. “The second thing, that may be more important, is that most of his teammates have been African-American, so that debunks a myth that African-Americans are more homophobic than others.”
Gordon said he didn’t worry about being accepted at Seton Hall in part because he was an upperclassmen, but it was a bonus that his young teammates openly supported him.
“I mean, he brings out emotion. He brings everything. He just picks us up when we’re down,” Pirates sophomore point guard Isaiah Whitehead said.
“You would think since these guys are freshmen and sophomores that they really wouldn’t understand, but that’s not the case,” Gordon added. “They accepted me for who I was, and it made things a lot easier.”
Gordon purposely went under the radar this season. He denied most interview requests that focused on his sexual orientation. He wanted the season to be all about basketball.
“If you juxtapose Derrick’s story and Michael Sam’s story, you have one that’s a wonderful success of happiness and joy and you have another that you don’t really know what happened,” Davis said. “With Derrick’s story, you can watch him on Instagram and see him recording a video of him and his teammates dancing. They’re really experiencing love and joy in a way that most of us that play sports want to experience it, absent of our sexual orientation.”
Gordon has become the example of what the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community want to champion. The hope is that a nonstory is the best story.
But the sports world isn’t quite there yet.
“That’s good for that team and that particular player, but there’s still room to grow,” said Morgan Seamont, the assistant director of gender and sexuality at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “There has been an alarmingly small amount of players that have come out.”
Gordon expected his leap to start a trend.
It hasn’t. There haven’t been any reports of a Division I player coming out since Gordon’s announcement.
Gordon is also making another kind of history as the first player to compete in the NCAA Tournament for three different teams. He did so previously for Western Kentucky in 2012 and UMass in 2014.
Gordon, at 6-foot-3, 205 pounds, has NBA dreams, too. He averaged 7.9 points per game this season as the team’s sixth man. His calling card is on defense, and he hopes to be drafted by an NBA team later this year. He hopes if he’s able to stick in the NBA, it will truly give people the motivation to be themselves.
“I want those scouts to know I’m here for basketball and the other thing is secondary,” Gordon said. “I just want to be known as a basketball player. I don’t want to just be known as a gay basketball player.”
Cameron Wolfe: cwolfe@denverpost.com or @CameronWolfe
