Spurs hold a moment of silence for Brandon Clarke and Jason Collins (0:52)Spurs hold a moment of silence for Brandon Clarke and Jason Collins (0:52)
Chuck CulpepperMultiple AuthorsMay 13, 2026, 06:00 PM ET
Thank you, Jason Collins, for being large — large of spirit, large of import, but also large of physical stature. That itself helped. It helped reinforce that gay people, an immutable portion of nature, breathe and thrive most everywhere, even in the merciless zones beneath NBA baskets among bruising collisions and untoward elbows and immovable giants.
By the time of your heartbreaking death at 47 on Tuesday, five months after a diagnosis of a brain cancer, 50 weeks since marrying your longtime other half, you had fashioned a philosophy for coping with the brickbats. I know because you explained it to me the only time we met, for an interview in April 2025 at a West Los Angeles golf course where the 405 whirred below and Jim Brown used to frequent like some topographical formation. You said, “I got some great advice from Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s mom. And she said, ‘You just keep living your life, you keep thriving, and that will be the way to sort of’ [surmount] — I think you’re always going to have that component, I guess we’ll call them the ‘haters.’ Another friend of mine gave me some advice: ‘Don’t feel like you need to address every single hater.'” It could end up, you said, like “Whac-a-Mole.”
I would have thought to thank you for that moment, the kind of thing I never thought I’d see in this life, but an interview is an interview, not the place to sit around saying, “Hey, you’re gay; I am, too!” What felt inappropriate then feels appropriate now, so I want to thank you for some things. As someone who spent decades walking to stadiums and arenas for work with a flaring sliver of fear that couldn’t have bolstered health, I want to thank you for your part in scuttling the last crumbs of that clutter. Thank you for your candor, such as when you told of college days of “still trying to, you know, date women and say to myself, ‘I’m going to find, air quotes, the right woman who’s going to make these feelings go away.'” That, especially coming from you, reminded me of the days of prevalent nonsense I had surpassed, as well as of what a lousy thing that would have been to do to a woman. Thank you for your athlete’s mind, a mind steered toward solving over wailing. Thank you for your decency as a multifaceted ambassador.
Spurs hold a moment of silence for Brandon Clarke and Jason Collins (0:52)Spurs hold a moment of silence for Brandon Clarke and Jason Collins (0:52)
You had gone from the heady mid-2010s, when your openness seemed a leading portent of a river of reality — of more pro athletes coming out — to the harder mid-2020s, when only a trickle had ensued, and when the clouds of backlash had gathered. So you mentioned the “sways” of history, and of that sage RuPaul saying, “In our country, there’s going to be a back-and-forth,” and then you said, “Also, you don’t know how much of that [backlash] is being amplified through bots.”
You concluded, “I can be a good teammate. I can always try.”
Thank you for being, and for being good, and for, when it came to the uneasy truth, being great.
You felt disappointment more than anger, and you said, in that interview for The Washington Post, “It’s interesting, whatever emotion you feel, it’s okay to feel that emotion. But I want, and I’m speaking to the next generation, or anyone, but I want you to use whatever you’re feeling for good, for positive. That is something that I’ve learned through sports, is that even a heartbreaking loss or a devastating injury, whether it’s two knee surgeries, the wrist dislocation, the angst of being a closeted athlete, whatever it is that I’m dealing with. But okay, how can you use it as a fuel for a positive and not turn it into a downward spiral but as a way to uplift, a way to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to use this to change something either in myself, something in my community, something in my country, in the world.”
Spurs hold a moment of silence for Brandon Clarke and Jason Collins (0:52)