How Jason Collins’ coming out essay became the ‘perfect story’ for Sports Illustrated

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The NBA player’s news was a bit different: he was gay, and he was ready to come out. “I’ll never forget, it was a profound moment in my career and really was an incredibly powerful moment in our relationship,” Tellem said in an interview with The Athletic this week. Collins’ 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. “I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport,” Collins wrote at the time. “But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.” Collins, who played for six teams in 13 seasons in the NBA, died Tuesday at 47, five months after announcing he was undergoing treatment for brain cancer. In the days since his death, as the sports world has revisited the piece — “Why NBA center Jason Collins is coming out now” — the people involved in making it happen have been reflecting on what it means to them 14 years later. Tellem recalled wanting to avoid a broadcast interview angling for ratings as a platform for the announcement. “It was very clear for me that he should write something personal with a very good writer,” Tellem said. Tellem called his childhood friend Franz Lidz, who worked at Sports Illustrated at the time. Tellem didn’t 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’s executive editor, showed up at Collins’ house not completely sure who would open the door. “I remember Franz Lidz and I sort of driving up to an address,” Wertheim said, “and we’re like, ‘Here we go.’” Over the course of four hours, Lidz and his daughter took turns asking Collins questions. “He was receptive to all my questions and answered them honestly and openly,” Lidz said. “He 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.” Wertheim remembers an easygoing atmosphere, a group of people sitting in a living room, chatting. “You sort of hear about the trauma sometimes of being a trailblazer. This was actually very sort of natural,” Wertheim said. “It went unsaid how heavy the moment was, but he’s 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.” Lidz spent the night writing. He specifically remembers choosing the opening lines: “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.” Collins wanted to be remembered for more than just his sexual identity. “I did it that way because I wanted to show the priority of what he considered himself,” Lidz said. The tears came the next morning, with Collins’ family. “We read it to them very slowly, one take, cold, not even having read the piece, and he was very moved at times by it,” Lidz said. 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’ piece did. “When you break a major story or where you’re the platform for a major breaking story, a lot of those stories, you feel a great professional pride,” said Stone, who has since founded a sports and culture newsletter called OffBall. “… But it’s not the type of story when you actually look at it and say, ‘Wow, this makes me feel great joy.’ You don’t 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.” More than the circus that came after, he remembers the writing. “I’ve read it a few times since the news broke,” Stone said this week. “It 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.” He continued: “It was Jason Collins’ story more than it was Sports Illustrated’s story.” Much has changed since the 2013 Sports Illustrated cover. Much hasn’t. 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. “Jason 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,” Tellem said. But while Collins’ and Tellem’s phones rang, Stone shut down the comments section on the article within 30 minutes of publishing. “Not surprisingly, it got pretty ugly,” Sone said, “and I would say probably the difference between 2013 and 2027, there are a lot more platforms now for things to get really ugly.” 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. “(I’ve) thought just how different times are from 13 years ago,” said Lidz, who now writes about archeology for The New York Times. “People were much more persuadable then, and I think they’re now in their own little corners.” The day after Collins’ death, Tellem, now vice chairman for the Detroit Pistons, began rereading the Sports Illustrated piece. “We hoped it would lead to others coming out, which it really hasn’t 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,” he said. “My hope is that it helped in that way, and I believe it did.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms