{"id":666258,"date":"2026-05-13T08:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666258\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T08:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:11:07","slug":"jason-collins-first-openly-gay-nba-player-dies-of-brain-cancer-at-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666258\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Collins, first openly gay NBA player, dies of brain cancer at 47"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"6LXR5MT6EVHPHAQ3ED7KLP2KXM\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">For most of his 13 seasons in the National Basketball Association, Jason Collins was known as the sort of player contenders always seemed to need and casual fans often overlooked \u2014 a broad-shouldered, 7-foot center who defended, rebounded, set punishing picks and accepted the game\u2019s less glamorous assignments without complaint.<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"55NGRW676NBZ7J7HYRW6RKFAAY\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Then, near the end of his career, he said something out loud that changed American sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of his 13 seasons in the National Basketball Association, Jason Collins was known as the sort&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-666258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666258","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=666258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}