Jason Collins, whose defense helped the New Jersey Nets get to the NBA Finals twice then finished his career with the Brooklyn Nets after becoming the first active gay player in any of the four major sports to come out as gay, has been diagnosed with brain cancer and is undergoing treatment. according to a statement released on his behalf by the NBA Thursday. Collins is an NBA ambassador.
Collins,
now 46, came to the New Jersey Nets in a 2001 Draft night trade with the Houston Rockets along with Richard Jefferson and Brandon Armstrong. The Nets gave up Eddie Griffin. Two weeks later Rod Thorn traded Stephon Marbury for Jason Kidd, the move that doubled the team’s wins from 26 to 52 and catapulted them into the NBA Finals vs. the Los Angeles Lakers. The next year, they returned to the Finals but lost again, this time to the San Antonio Spurs. Collins first as a back-up, then as a starter, provided defense and toughness for New Jersey through 2008 when he was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies for Stromile Swift.
Overall, the Stanford graduate played 532 regular season games and 75 in the post-season for the Nets.
He subsequently played for the Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards before coming out in a Sports Illustrated profile in May 2013. In the cover story, Collins became the first active male athlete from one of the four major North American professional team sports to do so. Collins also said the murder of a young gay man, Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming in 1998 had led him to choose No. 98 for his jersey number, in Shepard’s honor. Collins called the number “a statement to myself, my family and my friends.”
The move won him wide approval for his courage. On February 23, 2014, Collins signed a 10-day contract to rejoin the Nets, by then in Brooklyn. Nets coach Jason Kidd, who became good friends with Collins in New Jersey had advocated for signing Collins and owner Mikhail Prokhorov okayed the move. Collins retired that year as a Net.
Over his 13-year career, Collins had career averages in the NBA of only 3.6 points, 3.7 rebounds, 0.5 blocks, and 41% shooting from the field. However, more than one member of the basketball analytics community valued his defense through measurements not typically found in a boxscore, as Wikipedia noted in summarizing his career.
