Love and sexuality: Basketball star’s dating reality

The only openly gay professional basketballer Isaac Humphries has opened up about accepting his sexuality, and his dating reality.

Basketballer Isaac Humphries can finally see a white picket fence and long term partner in his future.

The only out gay man in top tier basketball globally, the Adelaide 36ers player said it took him a long time to come to this place.

“I see it and I think I can love a partner,” Humphries said in the latest episode of the Mental as Anyone podcast with J.Mo.

Isaac Humphries playing for Australia.

“I’m allowed one now, I can be out and I love that but then I start my day, back to back to back to back and I don’t have a single second to even think about it.

“In the general scheme of things, yes, I would love to explore that side of my life. It’s something I’ve not explored really ever. The whole dating, having a partner or falling in love, creating a life with someone, it’s just so foreign to me.”

Humphries in 2022 came out as gay.

He is one of the most prominent players in the Australian NBL and previously played college basketball in the US for the University of Kentucky. He played for the Sydney Kings before heading to Adelaide.

Now 26, Humphries revealed in the podcast that he spent years torturing himself internally over his sexuality.

“So as much as I would love it, I don’t really know how to do it or where to even begin,” he said of dating.

Adelaide 36ers basketballer Isaac Humphries. Picture: Brenton Edwards

“I’ve tried (dating app) Hinge and then you get the, ‘am I being cat fished’. That’s not how I want to start a dating experience, relationship. I just sort of find my lane and find peace in my work in my solitude. It’s okay, it’ll happen when it needs to happen.”

Humphries is one of 10 high profile men to feature in the first series of Mental As Anyone. Others in the series include Michael Clarke, Colin Fassnidge and Robert Irwin with each guest sharing their mental health experiences.

Despite being a professional athlete, there is a creative side to Humphries, who recently played a sellout season performing at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

“I was bullied atrociously for many things at school, but being a feminine singing dancing kid was the main one,” he said.

“I went 24ish years of my life never seeing a positive representation of being gay in my immediate circle of life so I think it was a collective for me, but then yeah, your mind starts creating narratives and you just follow the narrative in the end because you’re not equipped or strong enough mentally to think otherwise at that point.”

* A new episode of Mental As Anyone drops each Tuesday morning at 6am.

Originally published as Love and sexuality: Basketball star’s dating reality