Hoops and lesbians.

As she comes out in this issue of The Advocate, WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes is breaking down the very barricades the magazine reported on seven years age when it examined the high price of homophobia in college and professional basketball. The "conventional lesbian wisdom on coming out in women's basketball: Don't do it," said writer Susan C. Biemesderfer at the time. "For today's players ... it's worth it to keep mum. And as long as the players stay quiet, coaches and league officials likely will do the same."

In the article Jeanne Arnold, a former assistant dean at the University of Colorado at Boulder, referred to Swoopes, who had taken a high-profile maternity leave to give birth to son Jordan. "It's not about [resenting] Pat Summit," the University of Tennessee's married head coach, "or Sheryl Swoopes," she said. "It's the hype surrounding their heterosexual relationships in the absence of any recognition of other types of relationships."