Former Nets Center Jason Collins Announces Cancer Diagnosis

In an interview with ESPN's Ramona Shelburne, former NBA player Jason Collins announced that he was diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma, one of the deadliest forms of cancer, and is receiving treatment.

Collins, the first openly gay male athlete in any of North America's four major professional sports leagues, began his career with the New Jersey Nets in 2001, as he was part of both teams that reached the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003. He returned to play for the Brooklyn Nets in 2014 before retiring.

The 7-foot former center recalled first having symptoms in August, right around the time he and his husband, Brunson Green, were set to head to the airport to attend the US Open, but Collins had trouble packing.

“According to my family, in hours, my mental clarity, short-term memory and comprehension disappeared — turning into an NBA player’s version of Dory from ‘Finding Nemo,'” Collins said. “Over the next few weeks, we would find out just how bad it was.”

Collins's family released a statement in September, stating he was dealing with a brain tumor. However, the phrasing was intentionally vague.

"They did that to protect my privacy while I was mentally unable to speak for myself and my loved ones were trying to understand what we were dealing with," Collins said.

Collins described he might only have around a year to live, as the standard temozolomide (TMZ) chemotherapy for glioblastoma doesn't work on his tumor due to its genetic makeup.

“Because my tumor is unresectable, going solely with the ‘standard of care’ — radiation and TMZ — the average prognosis is only 11 to 14 months,” Collins said. “If that’s all the time I have left, I’d rather spend it trying a course of treatment that might one day be a new standard of care for everyone.

"I'm fortunate to be in a financial position to go wherever in the world I need to go to get treatment. So if what I'm doing doesn't save me, I feel good thinking that it might help someone else who gets a diagnosis like this one day."

Collins recalled a scary fall he experienced while trying to figure out how to turn off his cooler in his Los Angeles home a week before he visited the hospital.

"But all I could think while I was down there was, 'This is not how you're going to find me. I'm not going to be like Elvis on the toilet," Collins said. "If something goes bad here, this is not how you're going to find me. I'm going to figure out how to solve this puzzle. If I don't panic, I will figure this out. I will get myself up.

"You're reading this now because I eventually got myself up and figured it out. Anyone who knows me knows not to underestimate me on this, either."