Inside the NBA discusses the first openly gay player Jason Collins passing at age 47. “Anybody who think we ain’t got a bunch of gay players in all sports, they’re just stupid.”

In the cover story of the May 6, 2013, issue of Sports Illustrated, a first person story by Collins with journalist Franz Lidz, and posted on the magazine's website on April 29, 2013, he came out as gay, becoming the first active male athlete from one of the four major North American professional team sports to publicly do so. He was motivated to go public after his former college roommate Joe Kennedy, who had become a politician, marched in the 2012 Boston gay pride parade as a straight man, while Collins remained closeted. He wrote that he wished to maintain his privacy in regard to specific details of his personal life, and that he was not in a relationship. Collins also said a "notorious antigay hate crime", the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, led him to choose "98" for his jersey number, in Shepard's honor. Collins called the number "a statement to myself, my family and my friends".

On December 11, Collins revealed he was diagnosed with "Stage 4 glioblastoma".

Collins died at his home in Los Angeles on May 12, 2026, at the age of 47.