Welp, Jason Collins is dead at 47. The guy who made headlines for being the first active NBA player to announce he was playing for Team Rainbow. You remember, the whole song and dance back in 2013. The 'brave' essay in Sports Illustrated where he declared, like it was some kind of revolutionary act, “I’m a 34-year-old N.B.A. center. I’m Black and I’m gay.”

Look, everyone dies. But Collins' legacy isn't about his on-court performance. Let’s be real, he was a journeyman. Solid defender, decent rebounder, but hardly a Hall of Famer. Nah, his claim to fame was the carefully orchestrated PR blitz surrounding his coming out. He became a symbol, a talking point, a weapon in the culture war.

Remember all the fawning media coverage? The endorsements? The invites to the White House? All because he decided to tell the world who he sleeps with. Good for him, I guess. But let's not pretend it wasn't a calculated move to elevate his profile.

Did it actually change anything? Hard to say. The NBA is still a business, and businesses are all about pandering to whatever demographic they think will make them money. Rainbow logos during Pride Month, kneeling for the anthem, it's all just marketing, folks.

So, what's the takeaway? Collins played the game, and he played it well. He leveraged his personal life to gain attention and influence. But let's not mistake that for some kind of profound moral victory. It's just another example of how the culture war has infected every aspect of our lives, even professional sports.

Now he's gone. The woke mob will eulogize him as a hero, a trailblazer, a champion of diversity. Maybe they're right. Or maybe he was just a guy who figured out how to game the system. Either way, he's dead. So, RIP... I guess.

And let's not forget the other folks who quietly live their lives, without needing a magazine cover to validate their existence. Those are the real heroes. But they don't get the spotlight, do they?

So raise a glass to Jason Collins. He played the woke game and won. Now he’s off to that great basketball court in the sky. Or wherever. Don't really care, tbh.

Sources:

* Sports Illustrated: [https://vault.si.com/vault/2013/05/06/jason-collins-im-gay](https://vault.si.com/vault/2013/05/06/jason-collins-im-gay) * NBA Official Website: [https://www.nba.com/](https://www.nba.com/)