Jason Collins knew the exact moment when everything in his life was going to change. It was 11:30 EST/8:30 PST on Monday morning, April 29, 2013. A Media Storm "I got to my agent’s house around 6:30, and it was sort of, like, that was like the war room," Collins says. Collins had spent the weekend calling friends and letting them know what was about to happen. One of those calls was to his Stanford classmate, Chelsea Clinton. She put him on the phone with her dad. "We knew that we were going to enter into a media storm, and he has a little bit of experience dealing with that," Collins says. "Some advice that he gave me was, 'In that moment when it feels overwhelming, close your eyes, take a deep breath ... and then just keep moving forward.'" Collins says he wasn’t nervous. But they kept the TV on, so they’d know when the story broke. Soon, it was the top story on SportsCenter. "Alright now, recently some news. Jason Collins, veteran in the NBA, announced that he is gay, making him the first active male basketball player, or just male player in the four pro sports, to announce that he is gay." Life In The Closet Until 2011, Collins hadn’t told a single person — not a teammate, a friend, not even his twin brother, Jarron, who also played in the NBA. He says he lived in fear that someone would discover his secret. And he wasn’t just afraid some of the time… "Every moment," Collins says. "Just about every moment of my life. And especially when the conversation in the locker room turned to girls. When guys would start talking, even at a young age, when I was in junior high school, I would get real quiet because I didn’t want them to start asking me a bunch of questions.

"I was sitting on my couch with my dog, watching TV and thinking, 'Is this going to be it for the rest of my life?'" Jason Collins

"You have this pain in your stomach. And you have to try to prove that you’re straight. Just overwhelming weight and stress." For a while, Collins dated women. But later, he’d just tell his teammates that he had a girlfriend who lived in another city. Collins says keeping his secret even affected how he played basketball. "So, my role on an NBA basketball team was the defensive stopper, was to be the most physical player on the team. I love that role. I love contact. I love hitting," Collins says. "And I guess, I took all of my emotion, all of that stress, all of that anger for not being able to live my authentic life at that point and just used it on the court as fuel. To fire me." But during the NBA lockout of 2011, Collins was suddenly facing a life without basketball. And that’s the moment when everything started to change. "I was sitting on my couch with my dog, watching TV and thinking, 'Is this going to be it for the rest of my life?'" So, Collins started coming out to those closest to him. That fall, he ended up in Boston with the Celtics and decided to take a risk. Looking back, it could have been a big one. He chose jersey No. 98 to acknowledge the year 1998, when a gay college student named Matthew Shepard was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming. "I wanted to acknowledge this new identity that I was becoming more and more comfortable with," Collins says. "So each time that I put on my jersey, whether it be a practice or a game, I was wearing jersey No. 98." It’s rare for any basketball player to wear a number higher than 55. It’s discouraged because referees have to use their fingers to signal the jersey number of a player being called for a foul. So, when Collins asked for No. 98, the Celtics equipment manager asked why. And Collins, as he had done for so many years, came up with a lie. "I remember saying that it’s because I like to foul a lot — which is true — and I wanted to mess with the referees," Collins says. "So I started hiding in plain sight." Listen to OAG anytime. Subscribe to the Only A Game podcast. iTunes | Stitcher | RSS link Collins says he was happy in Boston. But in February of 2013, he was traded to the Washington Wizards. "Every time you go to a new team, every time, it’s like going to a new job. You have to go to your coworkers and tell them your story. 'Hey, are you married? Do you have kids?' I got tired of telling a lie. I really got tired of that. We Need To Talk "So I called my agent, Arn Tellem, and told him that we need to talk. And sometimes when agents get a call from their athletes saying that, 'We need to talk,' they think they’re about to get fired," Collins says with a laugh. Collins assured his agent that he wasn’t being fired. Arn Tellem had represented hundreds of basketball and baseball players. "And I assumed that one of those athletes had come out to him," Collins says. But Collins was the first. He wanted to go public. But there was still a month and a half to go in the regular season. They decided that the announcement should wait.

"I wanted to acknowledge this new identity that I was becoming more and more comfortable with." Jason Collins