With the NBA Finals now dominating the social media pages of most Jamaican sports fans, I was shocked to see the official NBA TikTok page feature a video of one of its more popular young players flaunting his multicoloured painted fingernails. I barely visit TikTok, so I can only imagine how aggressively this is being pushed by algorithms to our young, impressionable boys.
That moment of shock is what this article is about.
The word young people use for this kind of behaviour is being “zesty”. In current slang, it means feminine, flamboyant, queer-coded; or simply, gay. And whether we are comfortable with the conversation or not, the NBA; the most watched, most followed, most algorithmically amplified sports league on the planet; is having it with our sons every single day.
Sports stars are no longer just athletes. They have become influencers. They are among the most accessible male role models on earth for young boys aged 8 to 25. With that platform comes influence, whether they intend it or not. This did not begin with TikTok. The feminization of men has been a long, multi-front operation; in our food, our schools, our screens, and our culture. The algorithm is simply the latest and most efficient weapon in that arsenal. Masculinity has always been attacked with the help of male rappers, comedians, and actors dressing like women before the eyes of impressionable children.
Before we go further, understand this: what we are watching is not new. It is just better funded.
In the middle of the most physically brutal era of NBA basketball, one man decided to test a very different kind of boundary. Dennis Rodman (seven rebounding titles, five championship rings, “Bad Boy” Pistons player) was undeniably one of the toughest players of his generation. Yet he showed up to public events in wedding dresses, dyed his hair wild colours, kissed men openly, appeared in lingerie on a Sports Illustrated cover, and told the world he had visualized being with another man.
Sociologist Douglas Hartmann (The Reckoning Magazine), made a key observation: when an athlete is successful enough, there is always room for individual outliers. But Rodman’s flamboyance never shifted the culture. Every time he pushed the norms, he had to reassert his manly toughness and dominance on court. As a result, fans tolerated his eccentricity because Michael Jordan needed him to win championships. The moment Jordan left, Rodman’s cultural relevance evaporated almost overnight.
It is worth pausing here on something Rodman predicted from inside those locker rooms. He publicly estimated that 10 to 20 percent of NBA players were gay, and openly wished they would all come out. His words reported by The Advocate: “It’s acceptable today. Just come out, man. Have a good time.”
Looking back now, it is hard not to see Rodman as the first experiment. A test of whether fans would accept a gender-bending superstar. The answer was clear: they would accept the rings, the rebounds and the championships. But they would not accept the rest. The first attempt to normalize gender-bending in the NBA failed. Not because of lack of trying – but because there was no algorithm to sustain it.