Jason Collins, a longtime NBA center who became the first man to come out as openly gay while playing in any of America’s four leading professional sports leagues, died Tuesday following months of treatment for glioblastoma, his family said. He was 47.
The NBA announced Collins’s death in a statement issued on behalf of his family.
“Jason changed lives in unexpected ways and was an inspiration to all who knew him and to those who admired him from afar,” the statement said. “We are grateful for the outpouring of love and prayers over the past eight months and for the exceptional medical care Jason received from his doctors and nurses. Our family will miss him dearly.”
In 2013, Collins made history through an essay in Sports Illustrated. He had been mulling whether to go public since 2011, he said.
“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay,” he wrote.
His decision was widely praised inside and outside the NBA. Then-President Barack Obama called him to express his support, and Steve Nash, a two-time NBA MVP, posted his “maximum respect.”
Collins was a high school star in Southern California alongside his twin, Jarron, before both starred at Stanford. Jason Collins went on to play in the NBA for six teams from 2001 to 2014. In retirement, he had become an ambassador for the league.
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, called Collins a groundbreaking figure.
“He came out as gay — while still playing — at a time when men’s athletes simply did not do that,” HRC president Kelley Robinson said in a statement. “But as he powerfully demonstrated in his final years in the league and his post-NBA career, stepping forward as he did boldly changed the conversation.”
In September, he announced he was undergoing treatment for an advanced brain tumor. Symptoms had arrived quickly, he told ESPN last year. Last August — only three months after he married Brunson Greene in Austin, Texas — Collins began experiencing “weird symptoms” that included him being unable to focus while packing for a trip to the U.S. Open. Collins underwent CT scans, but within “hours, my mental clarity, short-term memory and comprehension disappeared.”
“Imagine a monster with tentacles spreading across the underside of my brain the width of a baseball,” he added of his glioblastoma diagnosis.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement Tuesday that Collins’ “impact and influence extended far beyond basketball as he helped make the NBA, WNBA and larger sports community more inclusive and welcoming for future generations. He exemplified outstanding leadership and professionalism throughout his 13-year NBA career and in his dedicated work as an NBA Cares Ambassador. Jason will be remembered not only for breaking barriers, but also for the kindness and humanity that defined his life and touched so many others.”
