It went beyond the pale, but I never said to myself that it was too much. That was the stupidest thing ever and I never really put any thought into it. Then it turns into this whole "Christian is Gay" thing. He asked me something like, "What are you doing this summer?" I was like, "I just wanna hang out here with Brian." Brian was sitting right there and we laughed about it.
But that just happened because I said one silly thing to Curry Kirkpatrick when I was a senior and he's like the biggest Carolina fan. Then I got married and maybe it melted away after that. Then once I was in the NBA, I think it went away because people just knew that wasn't me.
In an interview last week about the film with GQ, Laettner was asked about the gay rumors and how they started. "We're 21 years old and it was like, 'these motherf***ers hate us.' "
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"We didn't exactly go on TV and talk about some gay shit," Davis recalled. Christian is like, 'OK, if that is what you want to say, go ahead and run with it.' " After Laettner graduated, he bought Davis a car, which Bilas said raised some eyebrows. In the story, as Duke player Grant Hill recalled, "Christian said three things things right now are important to me - basketball, school and Brian." Doug Collins, who coached Laettner in the NBA, said Laettner and Davis "would be walking on campus and he might reach down and hold his hand or reach over and give him a hug. A story in Sports Illustrated at the time showed the two them posing on a rooftop holding a cat. The third factor was Laettner's relationship with teammate Brian Davis. It's embarrassing when you think back on it now, but that's where Christian Laettner fell into the world." "What would you say if something was not up to par? 'Oh, that's gay,' " said Ryan McGee, an ESPN The Magazine writer "What would say to the person you wanted to get to immediately? What was the cheapest thing you could say? 'He's a fag.' It was just part of what you said. Fans came to hate the team for its greatness, combined with a sense that these were a bunch of entitled preppies who got all the breaks Laettner was the face of the team and opposing fans needed something to fuel their hate. He also was the best player on a great Duke team from 1989-92. The "Laettner is gay" rumor spread because of three factors: He was a very good-looking "pretty boy," vain enough to fix his hair during a game he made women swoon and this made other men jealous. I just realized it was something I couldn't control, so when you look in the mirror, you know the truth, and rumors that I was gay in 1992, that was shocking and not very socially acceptable." "To be honest with you, it hurt and I didn't like it," says Laettner, 45, married with three children, "but the media makes a big deal about a lot of stuff that shouldn't be made a big deal of. The segment on the gay slurs takes up five minutes of Rory Karpf's film, but from my angle is the most gripping part of the story for showing how vile and abusive fans can be and how things have changed for the better. Thanks to "I Hate Christian Laettner," the wonderful "30-for-30" documentary that aired on ESPN Sunday, we get to see the crowd and hear the chants directed at the college basketball player everybody outside of Durham, N.C., hated. Slurs directed at gay player Derrick Gordon: 0