NBA Commissioner Adam Silver mourns Jason Collins as first openly gay player in major US team sport
Silver highlights Collins' role in fostering inclusivity across the NBA and WNBA, while his family confirms he passed peacefully at home after a valiant fight with an aggressive brain cancer.
Jason Collins, the first active male athlete in a major American professional team sport to come out as gay, has died aged 47. His family confirmed on Tuesday that he passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by loved ones, concluding a valiant fight against glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) announced the death, with Commissioner Adam Silver issuing a statement that underscored Collins' broader influence on the sporting world. Silver noted that Collins' impact extended far beyond basketball, helping to make the NBA, WNBA, and the wider sports community more inclusive and welcoming for future generations.
Collins was diagnosed with the inoperable disease late last year, revealing in December 2015 that the tumour resembled "a monster with tentacles spreading across the underside of my brain the width of a baseball." Doctors had warned that without treatment, he would have died within three months of the diagnosis. He subsequently underwent treatment with the drug Avastin to slow the tumour's growth and travelled to Singapore for targeted chemotherapy.
Reflecting on his diagnosis, Collins stated that the experience reminded him of his decision to publicly come out as gay in a 2013 Sports Illustrated cover story. He described the years following his announcement as "the best of my life," emphasising that life improves when individuals show up as their true selves. He was a free agent at the time of his coming out, a period before gay marriage was legal across the United States, and later became the first openly gay athlete to play in any of the four major North American professional sports leagues.
Collins played 13 seasons in the NBA across six teams, including significant stints with the New Jersey Nets and the Brooklyn Nets, where he helped define an era of the franchise and played a vital role on their back-to-back Eastern Conference championship teams in 2002 and 2003. A California native, he played college basketball for Stanford University before being selected 18th overall in the 2001 NBA draft. He retired in 2014 and was previously featured on Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people.
The Brooklyn Nets issued a statement expressing that they were "heartbroken" by his death, recognising him not only as a competitor but as a kind and thoughtful person who brought people together. Former Stanford coach Mike Montgomery also paid tribute, describing Collins as one of the school's "greats" who was big, smart, strong, and skilled. Glioblastoma remains the most common malignant brain tumour in adults, with no known cure despite treatments that can potentially slow growth.
