If only Tim Hardaway hadn’t taken the call. If only he had confined his comments to sports journalist Dan Le Batard to the crossover dribble, his career, his son, his favorite book, his top 10 playlist, what it was like to watch Manute Bol fold himself into an economy airline seat.
Instead he broached the subject of sexual orientation. It changed everything.
We aren’t going to exhaustively excerpt that interview here 12 years after the fact. Suffice to say Hardaway took a strident anti-gay stance. His rant was exhaustive. There was no equivocation.
That call and that interview follows Hardaway like a fistful of mortgage lates.