{"id":1938321,"date":"2026-05-16T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1938321"},"modified":"2026-05-16T10:00:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T07:00:43","slug":"how-jason-collins-coming-out-essay-became-the-perfect-story-for-sports-illustrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1938321","title":{"rendered":"How Jason Collins\u2019 coming out essay became the \u2018perfect story\u2019 for Sports Illustrated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Arn Tellem was on vacation in Africa when he got a message from Jason Collins saying he had something important to discuss. Tellem thought his client was going to tell him he was leaving for a different agent.<\/p>\n

The NBA player\u2019s news was a bit different: he was gay, and he was ready to come out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget, it was a profound moment in my career and really was an incredibly powerful moment in our relationship,\u201d Tellem said in an interview with The Athletic<\/em> this week.<\/p>\n

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Collins\u2019 announcement, in a co-authored essay published in Sports Illustrated on April 29, 2013, made him the first active, openly gay player in any of the four major North American sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport,\u201d Collins wrote at the time. \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

Collins, who played for six teams in 13 seasons in the NBA, died Tuesday at 47<\/a>, five months after announcing he was undergoing treatment for brain cancer.<\/p>\n

In the days since his death, as the sports world has revisited the piece \u2014 \u201cWhy NBA center Jason Collins is coming out now\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the people involved in making it happen have been reflecting on what it means to them 14 years later.<\/p>\n

Tellem recalled wanting to avoid a broadcast interview angling for ratings as a platform for the announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very clear for me that he should write something personal with a very good writer,\u201d Tellem said.<\/p>\n

Tellem called his childhood friend Franz Lidz, who worked at Sports Illustrated at the time. Tellem didn\u2019t say who the athlete was, just that he wanted to come out. Lidz was in Ireland and flew to California along with his daughter, Daisy, who acted as stenographer. The pair, along with Jon Wertheim, Sports Illustrated\u2019s executive editor, showed up at Collins\u2019 house not completely sure who would open the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember Franz Lidz and I sort of driving up to an address,\u201d Wertheim said, \u201cand we\u2019re like, \u2018Here we go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of four hours, Lidz and his daughter took turns asking Collins questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was receptive to all my questions and answered them honestly and openly,\u201d Lidz said. \u201cHe was so unguarded that it kind of threw me off, because people I write stories on are rarely that receptive to personal questions, and this is an interview that was 100 percent personal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wertheim remembers an easygoing atmosphere, a group of people sitting in a living room, chatting.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou sort of hear about the trauma sometimes of being a trailblazer. This was actually very sort of natural,\u201d Wertheim said. \u201cIt went unsaid how heavy the moment was, but he\u2019s such a congenial, cool, smart guy, that this was not done with sort of clasped hands and dramatic sighs. This was sort of done with a smile on his face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lidz spent the night writing. He specifically remembers choosing the opening lines: \u201cI\u2019m a 34-year-old NBA center. I\u2019m black. And I\u2019m gay.\u201d Collins wanted to be remembered for more than just his sexual identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did it that way because I wanted to show the priority of what he considered himself,\u201d Lidz said.<\/p>\n

The tears came the next morning, with Collins\u2019 family.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe read it to them very slowly, one take, cold, not even having read the piece, and he was very moved at times by it,\u201d Lidz said.<\/p>\n

Chris Stone, then the managing editor at Sports Illustrated, said the essay became the most-read story on SI.com at the time. Stone had been involved in his fair share of prominent stories in the sports world, but few brought the type of joy Collins\u2019 piece did.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you break a major story or where you\u2019re the platform for a major breaking story, a lot of those stories, you feel a great professional pride,\u201d said Stone, who has since founded a sports and culture newsletter called OffBall. \u201c\u2026 But it\u2019s not the type of story when you actually look at it and say, \u2018Wow, this makes me feel great joy.\u2019 You don\u2019t celebrate it beyond the fact of, like, celebrating a job very well done. This was more than celebrating a well-done; it was celebrating an important moment in sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than the circus that came after, he remembers the writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve read it a few times since the news broke,\u201d Stone said this week. \u201cIt is, to me, the perfect story. It is not overwrought in any way. It is very direct, but it is informed by so much thought and elegance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cIt was Jason Collins\u2019 story more than it was Sports Illustrated\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much has changed since the 2013 Sports Illustrated cover. Much hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

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Collins came out two years before the U.S. legalized gay marriage nationwide. When his story broke, calls came in from powerful people. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey.<\/p>\n

\u201cJason handled it with the sense of humor, grace, courage, and also a sense of purpose, that this was bigger than just him, and that he had to rise to the moment,\u201d Tellem said.<\/p>\n

But while Collins\u2019 and Tellem\u2019s phones rang, Stone shut down the comments section on the article within 30 minutes of publishing.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot surprisingly, it got pretty ugly,\u201d Sone said, \u201cand I would say probably the difference between 2013 and 2027, there are a lot more platforms now for things to get really ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n
\n \"Charles<\/p>\n
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\n Charles Barkley, on Jason Collins\u2019 death, laments lack of progress in \u2018homophobic society\u2019\n <\/div>\n
\n Barkley also believes there are still several gay players in many North American sports who have yet to come out due to societal pressure.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

In the years since, parts of the country have become more accepting of the LGBTQ community. Others, less so. Very few other active male athletes have come out since then, and none in the NBA.<\/p>\n

\u201c(I\u2019ve) thought just how different times are from 13 years ago,\u201d said Lidz, who now writes about archeology for The New York Times. \u201cPeople were much more persuadable then, and I think they\u2019re now in their own little corners.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after Collins\u2019 death, Tellem, now vice chairman for the Detroit Pistons, began rereading the Sports Illustrated piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hoped it would lead to others coming out, which it really hasn\u2019t in professional sports, but we hoped it would give others a sense of pride and courage to live their lives and to encourage others to be compassionate to all people and to fight for inclusion of all people and acceptance,\u201d he said. \u201cMy hope is that it helped in that way, and I believe it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Arn Tellem was on vacation in Africa when he got a message from Jason Collins saying he had something important to discuss. Tellem thought his client was going to tell him he was leaving for a different agent. The NBA player\u2019s news was a bit different: he was gay, and he was ready to come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1938321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1938321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1938321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1938321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1938321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}