Jason Collins changed the game, all games, with his courage to come out

Jason Collins never won an NBA title or made an All-Star team, and you won’t find his name among the career leaders in any statistical category.

Yet, his legacy will be as great as that of LeBron James or Steph Curry. Maybe greater, because Collins’ impact goes well beyond basketball.

There was a before Jason Collins, when gay male athletes felt no choice but to hide their true selves and young men searching for someone like them in professional male sports thought they were alone.

And, thankfully, there is an after.

The number of male athletes who played major professional sports after coming out is still dishearteningly small, but it is no longer zero. No one will have to bear the colossal burden of being the very first openly gay man in any of the major professional leagues because Collins was courageous enough to do it.

That is his legacy. That is his gift to every athlete who comes after him.  

“Jason changed lives through his courage, authenticity, and commitment to helping others feel seen,” tennis great Billie Jean King, the first prominent female professional athlete to come out, said in a statement on social media.

“His legacy extends far beyond basketball. He helped move sports and society forward with strength.”

Collins’ family announced Tuesday, May 12, that the former NBA center had died. The 47-year-old revealed in December that he’d been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer.

Gay male athletes felt they had to hide

Of course there were gay men in the NBA – and the NFL and Major League Baseball and the NHL – before Collins came out in April 2013. But none felt safe enough to share their true self with the world while they were still playing.

Trash talk and insults have always been a mother tongue in sports, and for far too long, homophobic slurs were one of the main dialects in male locker rooms. Whether it was spoken or just implied, the message to closeted players was that coming out risked upsetting that delicate balance. A player brave enough to tell the world his truth might alienate his teammates, fracture the chemistry of a team.

And if that happened on one team, the door to the rest of the league would slam shut. A player could lose his livelihood and the sport he loved just for wanting to be his authentic self.

So people stayed quiet. Some until their careers ended. Some for their entire lives.

But Collins was brave enough to want more, for himself, for other LGBTQ people, for our whole society.

Collins breaks barrier

“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,” Collins wrote in the first-person essay for Sports Illustrated announcing he was gay.

“… It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew,” Collins wrote. “And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time. I still had the same sense of humor, I still had the same mannerisms and my friends still had my back.”

Collins was a free agent when he came out, and it would take nearly a year before a team signed him. He finally joined the Brooklyn Nets on a 10-day contract in February 2014, then wound up spending the rest of the season with them.

He played in 22 games, and the Nets didn’t implode and their locker room didn’t come apart. Brooklyn reached the Eastern Conference semifinals before losing to the two-time defending NBA champion Miami Heat. No shame in that.

Game changed when Collins came out

Collins retired that fall, but the game had forever shifted. He’d shattered the stereotypes of gay men and destroyed the idea that there was no room in the major professional sports for a gay man.

Seven years after Collins broke the barrier for gay male athletes, Carl Nassib became the first openly gay man to play in the NFL. Minor league pitcher Solomon Bates came out in 2022 and Anderson Comas, a Chicago White Sox prospect, did the same a year later.

“He helped make the NBA, WNBA and larger sports community more inclusive and welcoming for future generations,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.

Homophobia still exists in sports, male sports especially. There are still athletes reluctant to come out while they're playing for fear it will jeopardize their careers.

But Collins showed gay men that they didn't have to hide, that major men's professional sports were more ready to welcome them than they expected. He made it so that "never" could no longer be a barrier.

"Openness may not completely disarm prejudice," Collins wrote in 2013, "but it's a good place to start."

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.