The grim reaper, that ultimate sports statistician, has finally called time on Jason Collins, the NBA’s first openly gay player, at the tragically young age of 47. The British sporting establishment, never ones to miss a chance for performative mourning, have already begun the solemn ritual of releasing statements they clearly drafted before his heart had even stopped. 'A hero. A trailblazer. A man of immense courage,' they will bleat, as they scramble to find a press conference where they can stand next to a rainbow flag and look suitably solemn for the cameras.
Collins, for the uninitiated, was a centre. A man who spent 13 seasons bruising his way around the paint for teams like the Nets, Grizzlies, and Celtics. He was not your typical pioneer. He was a role player, a grinder, a man who earned his living by boxing out and setting screens. And then, in 2013, he did something that made his defensive statistics look positively pedestrian: he came out. In a Sports Illustrated cover story, he announced he was gay. The first active male athlete in a major American team sport to do so. The universe, predictably, did not end. The NBA, after a brief collective intake of breath, got on with the business of bouncing balls. But for the British commentariat, it was a gift that kept on giving. Here was a man they could champion without having to understand basketball. A cause they could embrace without having to learn the rules of a sport they only watch during Olympics montages.
Now, in death, the tributes flow like cheap wine at a wake. Prince William, patron of the Football Association and man who once wore a Nazi costume to a party, has reportedly sent a private message of condolence. The Prime Minister, who recently suggested that transgender women should be banned from single-sex spaces, has declared Collins 'a symbol of hope for millions.' The BBC will undoubtedly devote a segment of Sports Personality of the Year to his memory, narrated by someone who once referred to an NBA game as 'a bit like netball but with more shouting.'
Let us not forget the sheer banality of it all. The British press, who spent years printing homophobic slurs about footballers and sneering at any hint of effeminacy in sports, will now genuflect before Collins’s memory. They will write op-eds about his legacy, his courage, his place in history. They will completely fail to mention that the British sporting world still has a raging homophobia problem that makes Mike Pence look like a liberal. That the Premier League, for all its diversity initiatives, has exactly zero openly gay players. That the Rugby Football Union still struggles to get its players to attend Pride events without sniggering. No, it is easier to celebrate a dead American than to confront the living hypocrites at home.
It is also worth noting the delicious irony of Collins’s death not receiving wall-to-wall coverage in America, because here, across the pond, they had the decency to wait until the news cycle was quiet. But in Britain, where we have no real sport to speak of (unless you count queuing), we will milk this for all the pathos it is worth. We will see photos of Collins in his Stanford days, a hulking giant with a gentle smile. We will hear pundits choke back tears. We will be reminded that he once threw a chair during a game and it was symbolically important or something.
In the end, Jason Collins’s greatest achievement was not his coming out. It was that he lived long enough to see a generation of kids who could play sports without having to hide. That is a legacy that no amount of royal condolences or prime ministerial gushing can cheapen. But do not think for a second that this country’s sudden outpouring of grief is anything more than a collective pat on the back for being so very, very progressive. We mourn Jason Collins now, but we will return to our comfortable bigotry by next Tuesday. It is the British way.
Rest in power, big fella. You deserved better from life, and you certainly deserve better from these posthumous platitudes.
