Real Cause Of NBA’s First Openly Gay Player Jason Collins’s Death Revealed
JASON Collins, the first openly gay player in a US professional sports league, has died at the age of 47.
The former NBA star previously revealed his devastating battle with stage four glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
His family said they were “heartbroken” to announce his death on Tuesday.
Collins made headlines in 2013 when he became the first active male athlete in one of North America’s four major professional sports leagues to publicly come out as gay.
He made the announcement in a first-person essay in Sports Illustrated which was welcomed with wide-spread support including from then-US president Barack Obama.
In a speech at the White House, Obama said: “One of the extraordinary measures of progress we’ve seen in this country has been the LGBT community deserves full equality, not just partial equality.
“Not just tolerance, but recognition that they’re fully part of the American family.
“Given the importance of sport in our society, for an individual who has excelled at the highest levels in one of the major sports to go out and say, ‘This is who I am,’ I’m proud of it.”
At the time Collins was a 12-year veteran of the NBA. He would play a total of 13 seasons throughout his career.
The centre was selected 18th overall by the Houston Rockets in the 2001 draft then was traded to the then-New Jersey Nets on draft night.
