USA basketball star comes out days before Olympics

Elena Delle Donne has taken a stand for something bigger than sports just before stepping onto the international stage.

The basketball star publicly came out as gay days before the heavily favored USA women's team begins its quest for the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Delle Donne is the reigning WNBA MVP and this will be her first Olympics.

Delle Donne didn't come out with much fanfare, however -- it's simply the first time her sexual orientation has been stated publicly and explicitly. The news is buried in a Vogue magazine profile that isn't even available online yet.

Via Outsports.com, here's the relevant passage from the Vogue profile: "Elena divides her time between traveling with her team, the Chicago Sky, and her family’s home in the rolling green landscape of Wilmington, Delaware. She and her fiancee, Amanda Clifton, keep apartments in both Chicago and Wilmington."

What makes this so notable is who Delle Donne is -- she's not just another player on the dominant U.S. women's team. Delle Donne, who is 26 years old, is the defending MVP of the WNBA. She was its second overall pick in the 2013 draft, and is arguably the most recognizable women's basketball player in the world right now.

And now, just before taking the global stage for two weeks, Delle Donne has gone public about her sexual orientation. That's a big deal.

She leads the U.S. women into their Olympic group play opener Sunday against Senegal -- a country in which 11 people were reportedly arrested last December simply for being gay.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"I’ve grown up in a family where I have the most unique sister in the world and we’ve always been taught to celebrate uniqueness," Delle Donne told the Chicago Tribune in Rio. "It was easy for me to be who I am and hopefully others can be who they are as well."

Delle Donne added that she didn't consider the Vogue piece a "coming out article" -- simply the natural result of a look at her life.

"It was just one of those articles where they came into my home, spent a couple days with me and Amanda is a huge part of my life," she told the paper. "So to leave her out wouldn’t have made any sense. It’s not a coming out article or anything. I’ve been with her for a very long time now and people who are close to me know that and that’s that."

Sometimes the biggest of statements can be made in the subtlest of ways.