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Jason Collins makes historic return to the NBA with the Brooklyn Nets

Jason Collins becomes first openly gay NBA player – video

On Sunday Jason Collins finally made his long-awaited return to the court, becoming the first openly gay individual to play in a NBA game. The newest member of the Brooklyn Nets made his season debut in the second quarter of their game against the Los Angeles Lakers. The crowd at Staples Center, recognizing the history being made, gave Collins the kind of warm ovation not often given to opposing players. Collins ended the night after playing 10 minutes, picking up five fouls and grabbing two rebounds in the Nets’ 108-102 victory over the Lakers. It wasn’t exactly the most memorable of box scores but Collins made his biggest impact of the night just by checking into the game.

Collins has been without a team since publicly coming out as gay last April, but the Brooklyn Nets signed the veteran big man to a 10-day contract on Sunday after plans to trade for the Lakers’ Jordan Hill before Thursday’s deadline and attempts to sign Glen Davis both fell through. Although it’s taken Collins longer than expected to latch on with a team, in some ways this feels like he’s returning at exactly the right time. The last few weeks have featured plenty of discussion on whether NFL teams would consider openly gay college football standout Michael Sam a possible distraction and how Russia has been hosting the Winter Olympics at the same time it has increased persecution of LGBT individuals. So far, conversations about the intersection of LGBT rights and high profile athletics have brought up so many questions, hopefully Jason Collins’s NBA return will start providing us with answers.

There have been openly gay active athletes in other US sports leagues. The WNBA has had star players such as Sheryl Swoopes and Brittney Griner come out in the past. Shortly after Jason Collins made his announcement, Robbie Rogers, who retired before publicly coming out of the closet, was inspired to return to MLS. Still, none of these leagues have anything close to the widespread cultural impact of the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL, and none of these four leagues have had an openly gay active player.

This changed when Jason Collins made his way to the scorer’s table, readying himself to get back to the decidedly unglamorous work that has kept him employed for much of his career: collect some fouls, soak up minutes when another starter (in this case Kevin Garnett) wasn’t available and maybe force a turnover or two. In the wake of his announcement in 2013, Collins has become something close to a celebrity, but there was nothing very star-like about his performance Sunday. He was the same journeyman player he has always been, a “background player” as he proudly puts it. It was as if Collins was taking up his own advice, given in a pre-game press conference:

“My message to other athletes is to be yourself. Be your true authentic self, and never be afraid to be your authentic self.”

If nothing else, the Nets’ decision saves the world from further opinion pieces about Collins’s continued unemployment. Cyd Zeigler of OutSports summed up these last ten months about as well as anyone:

For months many have asked the question over and over: Is Jason Collins not signed because he’s openly gay? The answer has never been simple... That hasn’t stopped many people – both LGBT activists and mainstream sports commentators – from making the leap: The NBA isn’t ready for Jason Collins because he’s gay. People still don’t believe – and some of them don’t want to believe – that the sports world has already moved past this issue, that yes, even gay athletes can be measured for their ability and content of character.

When Collins has been asked about why he wasn’t yet signed, he’s played it smart. He is a Stanford grad, after all. In a recent interview, LZ Granderson pressed Collins on the issue (as any good journalist with a rare interview with Collins would) – but Collins didn’t take the bait. While he’s been out front championing LGBT causes for much of the last year, when it has come to his own future he’s refused to blame a homophobic NBA establishment for not being signed.

One wonders if new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who took over from David Stern a few weeks ago, was particularly pleased with the timing. You can almost hear a sigh of relief in Silver’s response to the Collins signing: “Jason told us that his goal was to earn another contract with an NBA team. Today, I want to commend him on achieving his goal. I know everyone in the NBA family is excited for him and proud that our league fosters an inclusive and respectful environment.” Not a bad thing for Silver to have under his belt during his first month on the job.

Has there been some negative attention to the signing? Well, there’s been the usual ignorant hate on Twitter, which has become so expected after every bit of LGBT news that compiling it all to publicly shame those responsible has become something of a sport of its own. This is becoming less and less common, thankfully, and most of the negative reaction has been couched with phrases like “why is this news” and “who cares” lines, mostly from people who don’t care to hear about the topic for any reason. In the upcoming days, it’s almost inevitable that there will be a player, coach or executive who will slip and say something ugly or ignorant, and they will mostly likely have to respond to the well-deserved backlash that will follow. At this point, most of us have been through this media cycle enough times to have a sense of what’s ahead.

This brings up a point: as people have become more and more used to the news of notable people coming out of the closet, what exactly are these “distractions” that would make professional sports teams hesitant to sign an openly gay athlete? Before now, a common answer was that teams simply don’t know what distractions there could possibly be, because not a single team in the big four leagues had ever signed one before. Well, as of yesterday, that is no longer true.

Right now, the worry is less about signing a gay athlete and more about signing the First Gay Athlete In Their Sport, and the added media attention it would bring. There’s a strong possibility that the next week will prove that anyone thinking this has severely overestimated the media’s attention span. Over the next few days there will be a lot of chatter, twice as many cameras following the Brooklyn Nets around and an avalanche of thinkpieces much like this one. The media will exhaust every possible angle to this story and then, most likely before his ten-day contract expires, the next big sports story will break, the media circus will depart and Jason Collins will become just another veteran player trying to stay in the league. Collins himself made that point on Sunday: “The news cycle that we have, this story, there are only so many questions [the media] can ask.” In other words, ESPN probably won’t be sending out text alerts a week from now saying “BREAKING: Jason Collins is still gay”. It’s been less than 24 hours and we’re already at the “reaction to the reaction” stage.

There’s also the possibility of teams losing fans by signing an openly gay player. Now, teams sign felons, jerks and players from rival teams that their fans have hated with passion for years all the time without worrying too much about alienated anyone. Now it’s possible that the next week and a half will show that a significant percentage of fans will refuse to root for a team that employs a backup center who dates other men. It seems rather more likely, however, the next few games will reveal that Nets fans will be less concerned about his weekend plans and far more concerned if he commits too many dumb fouls or becomes too much of an offensive liability to play regularly.

Finally, there’s the worry that an openly gay player could become a problem with locker room chemistry, which, as the mess in the Miami Dolphins organization has proven, might be a bigger concern with some teams rather than others. In this case, it helps that Collins has always had a stellar reputation as a clubhouse guy, which is part of the reason why a guy who averaged 1.1 points a game in the last few years of his career could keep finding NBA teams willing to give him money. Meanwhile, the Nets are stocked with veteran players, some disgruntled fans would say far too many veterans, some who have played with Collins before. Someone who knows Jason Collins better than anyone, twin bother Jarron (of “I’m the straight one” fame) doesn’t think it would be a problem, pointing out that a NBA locker room, ultimately, is a workplace environment:

To me, I feel as though NBA locker rooms are good workplace environments regardless of anything really. I think anyone would tell you, “Can the guy hoop? Can he play? Can he help our team win?” And I think that’s what NBA athletes concern themselves with as far as teammates go. They want guys, solid guys, to be supportive, have their backs, that are going to work, that have the same level of commitment to reaching the goals as everyone else, to a man. I think at the end of the day, everybody just wants to know, “Can anybody who joins an NBA team, can my teammate help us win games?” That’s what it comes down to, and I think locker rooms are fine.

Jason Collins might not be in the league for long, the tenth day of his contract could very well be his last day as a professional basketball player, but he has already secured his place in NBA history. It’s still too early to predict how the media, the league and the fans will respond. We’re only on day two, after all. Still, it already feels like fears that an out gay player will pose too much of a distraction for their team have been overstated. That, more than anything, might end up being Jason Collins’s most lasting legacy.


assistant: Hunter Felt: Jason Collins became first openly gay athlete to play in US major leagues in a win over the LA Lakers and began the road to proving that 
such signings won’t be as distracting as some claim