[niss]

While I think the time for a prominent male athlete to be free to acknowledge his homosexuality or bisexuality is long overdue, apparently it remains a difficult thing. According to today's Star Ledger:

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For weeks, there have been whispers -- from players and management types, who for obvious reasons don't want to speak for the record -- that this team has legitimate chemistry issues, personality conflicts and breakdowns in mutual trust. For the most part, these matters are unrelated to their jobs, but it has had a profound effect on their performances.

One player, who also requested anonymity so as not to disclose his team's dysfunction, was glib: "We'd make a pretty good HBO series right now," he said.

The hard evidence is sketchy, but the locker-room problems manifest themselves in a dozen little ways. Their fourth-quarter execution, for the most part, is awful. Their best players --notably Vince Carter and Richard Jefferson -- look distracted at times. Their inability to sustain effort is alarming. Their starting lineup, which was one of the most productive in the NBA last year and still pulls in 75 percent of the payroll, rarely takes control of games.

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