{"id":149524,"date":"2025-09-11T18:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/149524\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T18:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:12:07","slug":"jason-collins-first-openly-gay-player-in-nba-being-treated-for-brain-tumor-nba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/149524\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Collins, first openly gay player in NBA, being treated for brain tumor | NBA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/nba\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA<\/a> player Jason Collins is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, the NBA announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cJason and his family welcome your support and prayers and kindly ask for privacy as they dedicate their attention to Jason\u2019s health and well-being,\u201d the league said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A 7ft center, Collins played eight of his 13 seasons with the New Jersey\/Brooklyn Nets and also spent time with the Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves and Washington Wizards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Collins, who is now 46, averaged 3.6 points and 3.7 rebounds in 735 games from 2001-14. He was drafted with the 18th overall pick by the Houston Rockets in 2001 after starring at Stanford alongside his twin brother, Jarron. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2014\/nov\/20\/jason-collins-gay-nba-player-retires\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">He retired from the NBA<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Collins made news off the court when he came out as gay in 2013 in an article for Sports Illustrated. He was the first active male athlete from one of the four major North American professional sports leagues to do so publicly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cI didn\u2019t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport,\u201d Collins wrote in his article for Sports Illustrated. \u201cBut since I am, I\u2019m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn\u2019t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, \u2018I\u2019m different.\u2019 If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I\u2019m raising my hand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NBA player Jason Collins is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, the NBA announced on Thursday. \u201cJason&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-149524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}