Jason Collins, first openly gay player, retires: our indifference is his triumph

Jason Collins, who made history as the first openly gay active player in the four major US sports leagues, officially retired on Wednesday. He played 13 seasons in the NBA, none more important than his last with the Brooklyn Nets.

Collins announced his retirement the same way he made his last major announcement: through the media. He wrote about his decision in Sports Illustrated, which in April 2013 published his coming out story, and in a longer and more intimate account for the Players’ Tribune, in which he detailed his basketball life since his decision to come out.

It wasn’t exactly a shock: the 35-year-old center went unsigned during the offseason after getting limited time as a bench player towards the end of the Nets’ 2013-14 campaign. He has appeared to move away from basketball, towards being a public advocate for LGBT athletes, as Cyd Zeigler of OutSports noted:

Because of Collins, at least 187 professional athletes talked about issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender athletes. No straight person can generate that kind of conversation about our issues the way LGBT people themselves do when they simply come out.

It was perhaps fitting that Collins’ announcement came as something of an afterthought – he never was a big deal, even at his peak. The big man was best known for providing suffocating defense on opposing teams’ centers, rather than his often minimal offensive contributions. Collins spent time with six franchises, beginning with the then-New Jersey Nets, and was never an All-Star. In fact, he was never a starting center.

It was because he hadn’t been a major difference-maker on the court for a few years that Collins almost didn’t become the first openly gay active NBA player after all. For months after his announcement, including all of the 2013 NBA offseason, he remained a free agent. The general consensus was that his age and declining skill set made him not worth the potential media scrutiny.

It wasn’t until after the All-Star Break that an NBA team took a flier on him, something which, Collins notes, President Obama himself predicted when they met during the State of the Union address in January. The Brooklyn Nets, then coached by Jason Kidd, whom Collins thanked in both of his retirement messages, signed him to a 10-day contract and ended up keeping him for the rest of their season.

The results were somewhat anticlimactic, but in a positive way. There was a sudden burst of media interest and then … nothing. The swarms of reporters who hovered before and after the first game dissipated, while he went about his work.

Collins describes the experience in his Players’ Tribune essay:

Everybody wanted to know what it’s like to play in a game as an openly gay man in the NBA. From the moment I stepped onto the court to the moment the final buzzer sounded – it was the same as my previous 12 years.

I was locked in. Nothing was different. I did what I always do. Being gay certainly didn’t affect how I played. I tipped rebounds to teammates, tried to de-cleat opponents with my screens, and I did my best to make life miserable for the opposing big. When the ball tipped off, I realized something that I wish I could instill in every single coach, GM, and player reading this.

IT’S STILL JUST BASKETBALL...

In the locker room after the first few games, there were a lot more cameras in front of me than usual … After a couple weeks, the media coverage shifted off of me because there are only so many ways you can write a story about having a gay teammate.

There will be a bigger story when the first superstar athlete comes out – then we might get the media circus NBA teams were worried about. That’s how it always is with the big-time sports stars, however, and Collins was never one of those: he was just a basketball player. His ordinariness, at least in the relative world of the NBA, was a key part of his story.

— Michael Sam (@MichaelSamNFL) November 19, 2014

Congrats to @jasoncollins98 on the end of a long and successful career. Wishing you the best on what's to come next, I know it'll be great

Here’s the thing though: when that first star player comes out, they – and indeed every openly gay pro athlete who will follow, long after it stops being a newsworthy event – will owe Collins a note of thanks.

Shortly after Collins came out, I wrote that he mattered because he brought “society one step closer to a future where a player’s sexual orientation actually won’t matter”.

Over a year later, that still looks like it will be Collins’s legacy. It’s a worthy one.