Sometimes history is made in the strangest of places.
On Sunday night, that place was the Staples Center, where nearly 19,000 people watched the Brooklyn Nets defeat the home-town Lakers 108-102.
Los Angeles is no stranger to historic moments, but a middling team beating an awful one in a fairly meaningless regular-season game isn’t the type of story one would expect to dominate the headlines.
It’s even less conceivable that a newly signed backup center who hadn’t played all season would be the center of attention. But when Jason Collins subbed in for the Nets with 10:27 remaining in the second quarter, he became exactly that.
Upon taking the court, Collins became the first openly gay athlete to play in one of America’s four major professional sports. He came out last May after his season had ended, but he spent the first half of this season unsigned to an NBA roster, until Brooklyn signed him to a 10-day contract last week.
Collins played 11 minutes off the bench, totaling two rebounds, one steal and five personal fouls. He didn’t record a point, which isn’t unusual at all to us who are familiar with Collins’ career, but he nonetheless scored a major victory for gay rights, equality and the NBA.
Sunday will be remembered as a landmark event in the history of American sports.
There has been a lot of well-wishing and patting on the back around the NBA from Commissioner Adam Silver all the way down the chain. The vast majority of which has been sent in Collins’ direction — as it should be. He is the one who was courageous to come out publicly and worked himself back into game condition after half a season off.
But some of the commendations have been directed at the man who signed Collins, Nets general manager Billy King. By signing Collins, King has arguably become a champion of equal rights for homosexual athletes.
That sentiment is disingenuous. King himself said bringing Collins onboard was a “basketball decision” when he spoke to the media for the first time since the signing. It is, but not one aimed at improving the 2014 Nets.
Instead, it’s a move predicating the idea that King can use this historic movement to insulate himself from another disappointing season.
Again, what Collins has done is heroic and he deserves all the respect in the world, but King has essentially used his comeback as a publicity stunt to distract Nets fans from the fact that Brooklyn is 26-28 this season despite having a $102 million payroll, which is nearly $15 million more than any other team.
For all the money King and owner Mikhail Prokhorov have spent on this team, they seem to have forgotten that rebounding is part of basketball. The Nets, who were already at or near the bottom of the league in rebounding, traded rebounding specialist Reggie Evans to the Sacramento Kings for shooting guard Marcus Thornton, which further depleted the front line.
In order to fill that void, King tried to acquire Lakers forward Jordan Hill and now-Clippers forward Glen Davis. Only after missing out on both, did King sign Collins.
The only problem is, even in his prime, Collins wasn’t a great rebounder, never averaging more than 6.1 boards per game.
Considering Collins doesn’t fit the Nets’ greatest need and hasn’t played in an NBA game in months, the logical reason for the signing is King wanting to redirect attention from him making his team’s weakness even weaker through yet another bad trade.
But the question remains why Prokhorov would support the move. The answer isn’t he’s more progressive than the average Russian billionaire, he just loves headlines more than winning. Just remember he’s the owner whose primary concern upon moving to Brooklyn was starting a war of words with the Knicks by putting up a billboard across from Madison Square Garden. Collins is a great story, but signing him is a move aimed more at grabbing headlines than wins.
You can take the Nets out of New Jersey, but you can’t take the New Jersey out of the Nets.
James Moran is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Beacon, N.Y.