This past weekend an imgur post of past tweets from NBA players hit the internet, causing a stir as many of the submissions were of risqué or questionable nature. The tweets of Portland Trail Blazers forward Al-Farouq Aminu reached another level due to their bald anti-gay statements. Though the tweets were posted 5-6 years ago, when Aminu would have been 19-20 years old, they had not been deleted from his account at the time of the original post. Though they have since been removed, neither Aminu nor the Trail Blazers have made public comment on the matter.

Today we're following up our post on the issue with a conversation with Jim Buzinski, co-founder and editor of OutSports.com. OutSports, a fellow SBNation site, writes about the intersection between homosexuality and athletics. Jim volunteered to help us understand the effect of LGBTQ-negative public statements on the gay community, athletic and otherwise.

While Aminu's tweets were the catalyst for this discussion, they were not its central subject. At no point does Jim demonize Aminu or assume that his tweeted statements reflect the entirety of his outlook. Instead he explains why these kinds of tweets remain a standing issue no matter what circumstances surround them. In doing so he addresses many questions asked (or implied indirectly) by Blazer's Edge readers as they discussed the matter.

So you can hear Jim's words completely--also to put a real, human voice to this issue--we decided to conduct an audio interview rather than written. It's 20 minutes long and it is absolutely worth a listen.

You can listen to the interview here.

We thank Jim and OutSports.com for their willingness to discuss the matter and help us process these events.

--Dave blazersub@gmail.com / @DaveDeckard / @Blazersedge