Jason Collins, the NBA's First Openly Gay Player, Dies at 47

Jason Collins, who in April 2013 became the first openly gay active athlete in any of North America’s four major men’s professional sports leagues, has died at 47 after an eight-month fight with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family.

For anyone who wasn’t paying attention to sports in 2013, it’s hard to overstate what Collins did. He was 34, a 12-year NBA veteran center who’d played for six franchises, entering the twilight of an unremarkable-on-paper career — the kind of steady, defense-first role player who rarely makes headlines. Then he wrote an essay for Sports Illustrated that opened with four words: “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” He made the cover. And instead of quietly retiring into a safer life, he signed with the Brooklyn Nets that season and kept playing — the first out gay man to appear in an NBA game, wearing No. 98 in tribute to Matthew Shepard.

That choice mattered as much as the announcement itself. Coming out and then walking away would have been a story. Coming out and going back to work, taking charges and setting screens in front of sold-out arenas and hostile road crowds, was a statement that being gay and being a professional athlete weren’t mutually exclusive — that the locker room didn’t have to be the closet.

The reaction in 2013 was, by the standards of the time, remarkably warm. Barack and Michelle Obama called to offer support, and Collins was later appointed to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Bill Clinton praised his courage. Martina Navratilova called him a pioneer. Doc Rivers compared the moment to Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color line. Kobe Bryant — who two years earlier had been fined by the league for using an anti-gay slur during a game — tweeted his support: “Proud of Jason Collins. Don’t suffocate who you are because of the ignorance of others.” Not everyone was so gracious, and Collins absorbed plenty of ignorance from corners of a famously macho sports culture. He kept playing anyway.

What’s remarkable, and a little sobering, is how long the moment stood alone. More than a decade later, no other male athlete has come out as gay while still active in the NBA, NFL, MLB or NHL. Collin Martin, who came out while playing in Major League Soccer, told reporters this year that without Collins, “I don’t know if the rest of us that came out after him, if it would have been as easy.” Analysts and former players marking his death this week have made the same point from different angles: Collins opened a door that too few have felt safe enough to walk through since. His impact was never really about basketball — he averaged modest numbers across 13 seasons — and everyone covering his death this week seems to agree it will be remembered on the scale of Robinson’s, not because of what he did on the court, but because of who was watching, and what he showed them was possible.

Collins is survived by his twin brother, Jarron, who also played in the NBA, and by a sports world that is, slowly and unevenly, still catching up to the example he set in 2013.

If you’re dealing with grief or the loss of an LGBTQ+ elder or role model, TrueQueer’s toolkit page has resources for finding community support.