Former Seton Hall guard Derrick Gordon says he was blackballed by the NBA because he’s gay, but a number of NBA scouts felt he was simply not a prospect worthy of getting an NBA workout.
“He’s not an NBA player based on skillset and ability level,” one veteran NBA scout told SNY.tv, adding that Gordon was a “good and tough kid.”
Several other scouts told SNY.tv that Gordon simply was not a “draftable prospect” and wasn’t worthy of a summer-league invitation as a result.
“I wasn’t getting anywhere in terms of workouts,” Gordon told Jerry Carino of Gannett New Jersey. “Nobody was calling. Even after I went to the (Las Vegas) combine in July, I still didn’t get any feedback.”
He added: “I personally don’t believe it was because of my game. I think at least I could have been given a shot to work out (for an NBA team), to play against some of those other players instead of being shut out.”
In his third college stop, the 6-foot-3 Gordon was a sixth man for a Seton Hall team that won the Big East Tournament championship, beating eventual NCAA champion Villanova in the final at Madison SQuare Garden, before losing to Gonzaga in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
A scrappy and tough defender, he averaged 8.0 points while shooting 40 percent from three-point range.
Gordon, a New Jersey native who became the first openly gay male Division 1 basketball player when he came out in April 2014, is training to become a firefighter in San Francisco.
“I’m excited,” he told Carino. “Ever since I was little, when the trucks came by and I would hear the alarms go off, it always caught my attention. I always pictured myself in the back of a truck, in the passenger’s seat, as the driver. I always thought, if I don’t play basketball, this is what I would love to do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a dangerous job, a career as a firefighter. But it’s a great opportunity.”
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