{"id":68131,"date":"2025-12-12T00:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/68131\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T00:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T00:19:11","slug":"ex-brooklyn-nets-forward-battling-brain-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/68131\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Brooklyn Nets forward battling brain cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Brooklyn Nets forward Jason Collins, the first openly gay player in the NBA<\/a>, is battling stage four brain cancer, he announced Thursday.<\/p>\n

Collins, 47, has a particularly aggressive form of glioblastoma<\/a>, he wrote in an article published by ESPN.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the CT machine at UCLA for all of five minutes before the tech pulled me out and said they were going to have me see a specialist,\u201d Collins wrote. \u201cI\u2019ve had enough CTs in my life to know they last longer than five minutes and whatever the tech had seen on the first images had to be bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JasonJason Collins looks on in the first half during a game between the Nets and Bucks on Nov. 19, 2014, at the Barclays Center in New York. (Alex Goodlett\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In September, Collins\u2019 family announced he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor<\/a>, but he said Thursday that statement was intentionally vague and allowed him to gather his thoughts and explain his whole story.<\/p>\n

Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer in adults<\/a>, according to the American Cancer Society. The cancer spreads quickly around the brain or spinal cord, endangering crucial parts of the central nervous system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes glioblastoma<\/a> so dangerous is that it grows within a very finite, contained space \u2014 the skull \u2014 and it\u2019s very aggressive and can expand,\u201d Collins wrote. \u201cWhat makes it so difficult to treat in my case is that it\u2019s surrounded by the brain and is encroaching upon the frontal lobe \u2014 which is what makes you, \u2018you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins said he and his family first realized something was wrong in August, when he missed a flight due to brain fog and scattered thoughts. He began receiving treatment shortly afterward, even flying to Singapore to receive targeted chemotherapy.<\/p>\n

\"JasonJason Collins of the Nets warms up before a game against the Nuggets on Feb. 27, 2014, in Denver. (Justin Edmonds\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

On average, someone with Collins\u2019 cancer will live for an additional 11 to 14 months, he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s all the time I have left, I\u2019d rather spend it trying a course of treatment that might one day be a new standard of care for everyone,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSo if what I\u2019m doing doesn\u2019t save me, I feel good thinking that it might help someone else who gets a diagnosis like this one day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Brooklyn Nets forward Jason Collins, the first openly gay player in the NBA, is battling stage four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[13492,98,100,99,35375,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-68131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brain-cancer","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-jason-collins","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}