Former NBA player John Amaechi will announce that he is gay on ESPN early next week, according to Outsports.
Promoting his new book "Man in the Middle," Amaechi chronicles life as a closeted player in the National Basketball Association.
Amaechi, British-born of English and Nigerian descent, played for the Orlando Magic and Utah Jazz before his retirement in 2003.
His sexuality has been a topic of speculation for years, even so far as sparking a tasteless comment on Amaechi's "atypical" fondness of gardens, opera, and poetry.
"Could be that the Nigerian-Brit just operates on a different planet?" sportswriter Randy Boyd once asked in his ever-insightful column. "But then again, that explanation for his atypical behavior wouldn't be any fun, now would it?"
When nominated among those in the NBA most likely to be gay (ranked in 16th place), Ameachi reportedly asked, "Why wasn't I higher than 16th?"
Next week's public confession is said to kick off Amaechi's book-promoting campaign in New York.
His publicist, Howard Bragman, has described Amaechi as "an activist for a lot of different causes, and thought it was silly that he wasn't an activist for the LGBT community, so he decided there was no reason for him to stay in the closet."
Bratman further described his athlete as "discreet but not deeply closeted.
"For people who know him or have covered him, it's probably not a shocking revelation."
In his book, Amaechi describes his sexuality as "an open secret" among the American sports media.
"By the end of my second season, I was practically daring reporters to take the bait and out me," he wrote. "But it never happened. My sexuality, I felt, had become an open secret, which was fine by me. I'd left enough open to interpretation that suspicions were gaining momentum."
In a 2002 interview with the Scotsman newspaper, Amaechi explained why gays weren't visible in the NBA.
"If you look at our league, minorities aren't very well represented," he said. "There's hardly any Hispanic players, no Asian-Americans, so that there's no openly gay players is no real surprise. It would be like an alien dropping down from space. There'd be fear, then panic: They just wouldn't know how to handle it."
Amaechi, listed on the Web site 100 Great Black Britons, was raised in the UK but moved to States as a child. Playing for Penn State, the 6'10" Amaechi was twice named to the Academic All-American first team.
He came out of retirement to play for England last year during the Commonwealth Games, winning a bronze medal.
Amaechi now works as a philanthropist for the ABC Foundation, which works to construct sports centers and create mentors and athletic programs for children in England.
