Mr. Collins joined the Pride parade along with then-Representative Joseph Kennedy III in Boston in 2013. The two were roommates at Stanford University.
Mr. Collins joined the Pride parade along with then-Representative Joseph Kennedy III in Boston in 2013. The two were roommates at Stanford University.Reuters
Jason Collins, a 7-foot center and NBA journeyman who in 2013 became the first openly gay player in any of the four traditional major American men’s sports leagues, has died. He was 47.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced the death in a statement on Tuesday. Mr. Collins’s family said he died of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. In December, he disclosed his diagnosis and said he was undergoing treatments.
“To call Jason Collins a groundbreaking figure for our community is simply inadequate. We truly lost a giant today,” said Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups.
Mr. Collins entered the NBA in 2001, in a period when professional basketball was less perimeter-oriented and geared toward taller players who played closer to the rim. While he was never a scoring leader or even a full-time starter, his height, professionalism, and ability to defend against other centers made him a valuable asset to six NBA teams in a professional career that lasted 13 seasons. He played 32 games for the Boston Celtics in 2012-13.
Mr. Collins (center) and Jason Terry defended Milwaukee Bucks' Monta Ellis in Boston in 2012.
Mr. Collins (center) and Jason Terry defended Milwaukee Bucks' Monta Ellis in Boston in 2012.Michael Dwyer
When he retired in 2014, he said he hoped to be remembered as “a great teammate, someone who always sacrificed for the team.”
But his achievements on the court were eclipsed by a front-page essay he wrote in Sports Illustrated in 2013.
“I’m a 34-year-old N.B.A. center. I’m Black and I’m gay,” it began.
In the essay, Mr. Collins said he was spurred to speak publicly after his former Stanford University roommate, Joe Kennedy, a congressman from Massachusetts at the time, marched in a Pride parade in Boston.
“I’m seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy,” Collins wrote. “I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn’t even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator.”
Mr. Collins was a free agent when he wrote the essay, and there was an open question about whether it would end his career. Though the gay rights movement had made significant strides, same-sex marriage would not be made legal nationwide until 2015 and American men’s professional sports had not historically been welcoming to gay athletes.
But Mr. Collins received considerable support from celebrities and sports figures.
Mr. Collins, in Boston in 2013.
Mr. Collins, in Boston in 2013.Reuters
He took a phone call from President Obama and was invited to attend the 2014 State of the Union address as a guest of Michelle Obama, the first lady. He was appointed to serve on the president’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.
“Now that Jason Collins has come out, he is the proverbial ‘game-changer,’” wrote tennis great Martina Navratilova, who came out publicly in 1981. “One of the last bastions of homophobia has been challenged. How many LGBT kids, once closeted, are now more likely to pursue a team sport and won’t be scared away by a straight culture?”
The praise wasn’t universal. “All these beautiful women in the world and guys wanna mess with other guys SMH…” Miami Dolphins wide receiver Mike Wallace wrote on Twitter, using shorthand for “shaking my head.” He later apologized.
But the largely positive response from other NBA figures showed how views about gay people had shifted. Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who was fined by the NBA in 2011 for directing an antigay slur at a referee, posted a message of support for Collins on social media: “Proud of @jasoncollins34. Don’t suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others.”
Mr. Collins also received a supportive call from retired star point guard Tim Hardaway, who in 2007 told a radio station that he hated gay people and that he would not have wanted to be on the same team as John Amaechi, a former player who had come out that year. Hardaway has since become a vocal supporter of gay rights.
Hardaway’s evolution was “something that many people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community are very familiar with,” Mr. Collins told the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 2022.
“They might start off on one end of the spectrum as far as not being supportive and being homophobic,” he said. “But then over time of having more exposure and more education, then they become an ally and next thing you know they’re at the Pride parade celebrating. That’s literally how it happened with Tim.”
No team signed Mr. Collins before the start of the 2013-14 season. He wasn’t even invited to any training camps. But midway through the season, Mr. Collins, then 35, signed with the Brooklyn Nets, the team where he began his career when it was based in New Jersey.
Mr. Collins said he had not set out to become a pioneer.
“I’m happy to start the conversation,” he wrote in his essay. “I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”
Jason Paul Collins was born on Dec. 2, 1978, in Los Angeles to Paul and Portia Collins. His mother, who was expecting just one child, gave birth to Jason’s twin brother, Jarron, eight minutes after delivering him. Jason and Jarron attended the private Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, where they led the basketball team to two state Division III titles. The twins were teammates at Stanford before moving on to the NBA.
Mr. Collins (right), with his twin, Jarron, starred at Stanford University in 2000.
Mr. Collins (right), with his twin, Jarron, starred at Stanford University in 2000.PAUL SAKUMA
Jason Collins was selected as the 18th overall pick in 2001 by the Houston Rockets and was swiftly traded to the Nets. He spent his first six seasons with the Nets and was a key part of teams that made the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003, the most successful stretch in franchise history.
Mr. Collins was never known for scoring - he averaged 3.6 points and 3.7 rebounds per game for his career - but coaches valued his physical defense, communication and willingness to perform the sport’s unglamorous work: boxing out, setting screens and anchoring defensive schemes.
His announcement that he was gay gave new meaning to a quiet gesture he had made for years. Mr. Collins wore jersey No. 98 in honor of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student murdered in Wyoming in 1998 in a hate crime that became a watershed moment in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
“When I put on my jersey,” Mr. Collins wrote, “I was making a statement to myself, my family and my friends.”
Mr. Collins later befriended Shepard’s family. His No. 98 jersey quickly became the top seller in the NBA’s online store, and the league said proceeds from sales and auctions of his jerseys would benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation and GLSEN, organizations that advocate for LGBTQ+ equality and safety in schools.
“Some kids are still living hidden lives, living in fear, and the more you see Jason and Michael Sam and others encouraging them to be themselves, they’ll understand they can get to the top of whatever ladder they’re climbing,” Shepard’s father, Dennis, told ESPN in 2014. (Sam, an all-American defensive lineman at the University of Missouri, had come out as gay that year.)
After retiring in November 2014, Mr. Collins was a public speaker and political activist, campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and becoming a critic of President Trump.
After Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player to come out as gay in 2021, Mr. Collins told The Los Angeles Times, “As professional athletes, we’re used to inspiring the next generation, people who are younger than us. But he’s going to find that his actions have inspired not only people who are younger than him but older than him.”
Mr. Collins was still active, even as he was treated for cancer. In February, he participated in an NBA Cares event in South Los Angeles.
“I’m so proud of the NBA for the work that they have done off the court,” he said at the event. “It’s so interesting because when you first start playing, you learn about how basketball crosses over. It opens doors.”
Mr. Collins married Brunson Green, a film producer, in May 2025. In addition to his husband, he leaves his parents and his brother, Jarron, who played 10 seasons in the NBA, most of them with the Utah Jazz, and is now an assistant coach with the New Orleans Pelicans.
In an essay for ESPN in which he revealed his glioblastoma diagnosis, Jason Collins recalled his announcement from more than a decade earlier.
“I got to tell my own story, the way I wanted to. And now I can honestly say, the past 12 years since have been the best of my life,” he wrote. “Your life is so much better when you just show up as your true self, unafraid to be your true self, in public or private.”
Material from The Washington Post was used in this obituary.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.