First Openly Gay Pro Athlete Jason Collins Retires

Jason Collins, the first openly gay athlete to play in one of North America’s four major professional sports leagues, has retired from the NBA after 13 seasons.

The announcement of Collins retirement came in a column for Sports Illustrated on Wednesday. It was only 18 months ago when he wrote a similar first-person column for the sports site publicly announcing his sexual orientation in which he detailed how mentally exhausting it was to live as a closeted gay man in the sport he had loved his entire life.

After beginning his career with the Nets, Collins spent time with several teams over his career, including the Memphis Grizzlies and the Boston Celtics before becoming a free agent before the 2013 season. He went unsigned for much of the season before making the decision to live as an openly gay man and was signed back to the Nets not long after his announcement and finished the 2013 season with the team that originally drafted him.

The 35-year-old was never known for his offensive production, averaging a mere 3.6 points per game over the length of his career, but was instead used as a body to help defend some of the leagues best big men. In the 2010-11 seasons Collins and the Atlanta Hawks defeated the Orlando Magic and their dominant center Dwight Howard. Orlando’s coach at the time, Stan Van Gundy, credited the win to Collins saying it was “the best defense on [Howard] all year.”

Collins was once again unsigned before the 2014 season and has decided to leave the sport he believes saved him. “In order to understand why I am so lucky to be sitting here today as a person who is finally comfortable in his own skin, you need to understand how basketball saved me,” wrote Collins in his column. “I need to live the past few years as an openly gay basketball player in order to be at peace retiring today.”