Bluesky

On Wednesday, cancer killed a 47-year-old former NBA player of singular bravery. In hindsight, I don’t think we realized just how courageous he was when he was in the headlines. His name was Jason Collins, and he played 13 years in the league, following an All-American college career at Stanford where he suited up alongside his twin brother, Jarron. Jason Collins, of course, will be remembered as a trailblazer. Not a Portland Trail Blazer but the person who took on the weight of being “a first.” He was the first openly gay, active male athlete in one of the four big sports leagues—NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL—in North America.

Collins came out in 2013, in a beautiful first-person essay written alongside journalist Franz Lidz in Sports Illustrated. “No one wants to live in fear,” Collins wrote. “I’ve always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don’t sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I’ve endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew. And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time.”

The boldness of Collins’s statement was also due to its timing. He was a free agent at the tail end of his career and was taking a risk that he would never play again. What team would be the first to sign a gay player? Especially when they could hide behind his advanced age (34) to dodge charges of homophobia? After waiting for 50 games, the Brooklyn Nets finally called, signing him in 2014. Upon joining the team, he wore number 98 in tribute to Matthew Shepard, the gay teen tortured and murdered in a horrific hate crime in 1998.

I contacted Cyd Zeigler, the legendary cofounder of Outsports for comment, and he said to me, “The world knows Jason Collins for coming out, but the LGBTQ community and the NBA family know him for being out. Not just for that historic moment of courage he showed with the SI cover, but for marching in the parades, for showing up for the fundraisers, for working with the youth and doing it every time, even as he battled cancer, with a genuine smile and love. Jason’s historical significance wasn’t a moment; it was the movement into which he infused his soul.”

The Nets’ signing Collins was cause for relief and hope. And yet I think we all overstated the change that it could spark, which only makes Collins’s decision more exceptional.

Looking back at my own reportage, I think that I got the relief part right, but I was overly optimistic. I thought—in a moment of victorious overexuberance—that it was going to be a turning point for all gay athletes who had to hide their true selves as the price for playing pro sports. I wrote:

For as long as I have written about this issue and as many times as I have said in recent years that “[a male player will come out] in a matter of months if not weeks,” it still hit me like a triple-shot of espresso cut with a teaspoon of Adderall. Thanks to the courage of 34-year-old NBA veteran Jason Collins, we can no longer repeat endlessly that no active male athlete in North America has ever come out of the closet. Instead we’re now able to say that we were there when our most influential cultural citadel of homophobia—the men’s locker room—was forever breached and finally received a rainbow makeover on its unforgiving grey walls.

If I could go back in time, I would put an arm around the shoulder of my 2014 self and say, “Calm down, champ.”

I wasn’t alone in thinking that we were about to see more male athletes come out. I quoted LGBTQ icon Martina Navratilova, who had joyfully commented about the liberatory example that Collins was providing. She wrote, “Collins has led the way to freedom. Yes, freedom—because that closet is completely and utterly suffocating. It’s only when you come out that you can breathe properly.… Millions of kids will see that it is OK to be gay. No need for shame, no need for embarrassment, no need for hiding.”

Fast-forward to 2026, and Navratilova has now rebranded herself as an anti-trans zealot—no “freedom” and “breathing properly” permitted for trans kids. Her transformation shows that progress is never linear as well as just how far we still must go. The few trans people that play organized youth sports are being hounded off the playing field by the federal government and the International Olympic Committee. This hate ripples out, endangering cisgender gay kids as well.

Collins’s decision to come out didn’t cause a reckoning in the male sports world. He was unable to inspire a generation of gay, male, professional athletes—and yes, they very much exist—to join him out of the closet. The closest we came was in 2014, when linebacker Michael Sam, a lauded college player, was drafted in the seventh round (the last) but didn’t make an NFL roster. According to anonymous quotes from players and executives, homophobia thwarted his efforts. Earlier this year, in the allegedly more liberal NBA, the Chicago Bulls cut Jaden Ivey after he posted a series of homophobic diatribes on social media. Some players defended him, and not a single NBA player directly spoke out against the bile he chose to spew. No one said, “That’s not who we are.” The silence spoke volumes.

In 2013–14, Collins stood alone, and no male player in pro sports has stood up for gay rights like him in the years since. In many of the retrospectives of Collins’s life, there is no mention that Collins leaves behind his husband, Brunson Green, his partner for over a decade. Collins’s story is being erased even in death. We should appreciate the battles he fought, the lives of kids he undoubtedly saved, and the valor with which he chose to live. In the NBA, he stood alone, but by being willing to stand alone, he ended up surrounded by love. For his bravery, he will be remembered forever.