JD Skeets

Collins announced he was gay in a 2013 Sports Illustrated cover story, becoming the first male athlete to come out of the closet in one of the four major professional sports.

So a trailblazer in the truest sense.

And what a legacy he leaves, unfortunately, leaving us way too soon.

Yep.

Trailblazer.

He's an advocate.

He was an activist.

He definitely changed the minds of a lot of people, opened doors for others as well.

And, you know, it's a different sort of thing than Brandon Clark, since we knew that Jason Collins was sick with brain cancer.

He wasn't given a long prognosis.

It seemed to play out about as expected, unfortunately.

And it's just sad in a different way, for sure.

The guy made a lot of headlines for a player that you probably don't remember a lot of what he did on the court.

But he was very important to the NBA outside of the four lines.

Yeah, he influenced the way a lot of people think about gay people, the gay community.

He mentioned Tim Hardaway, not the young one, the old one.

And how Tim Hardaway was like a lot of people who think, oh,

I dislike gay people, as Tim Hardaway came out and said.

I hate gay people.

Then, as he was educated and understood what people are people, as simple as that, and Tim Hardaway swung the other direction in that he went to Pride parades and was part of that community.