{"id":339253,"date":"2025-12-12T00:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/339253\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T00:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:03:10","slug":"jason-collins-nbas-first-openly-gay-player-says-he-has-a-year-to-live-after-brain-tumor-diagnosis-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/339253\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Collins, NBA\u2019s first openly gay player, says he has a year to live after brain tumor diagnosis | Basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Collins, the former NBA<\/a> player who became the first openly gay man to play in a major US pro sports league, said Thursday he\u2019s battling \u201cone of the deadliest forms of brain cancer\u201d.<\/p>\n

Collins, who revealed in a brief statement in September<\/a> that he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, said in an interview with ESPN\u2019s Ramona Shelburne published Thursday that he has stage 4 glioblastoma.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came on incredibly fast,\u201d the 47-year-old said, describing early symptoms of memory loss and inability to focus that reached a tipping point in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had been having weird symptoms like this for a week or two, but unless something is really wrong, I\u2019m going to push through. I\u2019m an athlete,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n

But he said a CT scan revealed the extent and seriousness of his illness, which he said was a \u201cmultiforme\u201d glioblastoma that was growing so quickly that he could die within weeks.<\/p>\n

He said that with the support of his husband, Brunson Green, and other friends and family he began treatment with medication followed by radiation and chemotherapy.<\/p>\n

He said his decision to pursue innovative treatment \u2013 currently at a clinic in Singapore \u2013 reminded him of when he decided to come out as gay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m right back in that position now, where I might be the first person through this wall,\u201d he said. \u201cWe aren\u2019t going to sit back and let this cancer kill me without giving it a hell of a fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to try to hit it first, in ways it\u2019s never been hit: with radiation and chemotherapy and immunotherapy that\u2019s still being studied but offers the most promising frontier of cancer treatment for this type of cancer.<\/p>\n

Collins recalled that when his grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer, she didn\u2019t like to hear people use the word \u201ccancer\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care if you say the word,\u201d he said. \u201cI have cancer, but just like my grandmother fought it, I\u2019m going to fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Collins, the former NBA player who became the first openly gay man to play in a major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-339253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}