In NBA, Collins now just another player

As the issues of tanking, “one-and-done” collegiate players and mock drafts dominate NBA conversations, a blessed truth has emerged: Jason Collins is just a basketball player.

That was his dream, when he came out to the world, and while the process isn’t quite complete, it is steaming forward without a hitch. Whatever the setting, fans have warmed to the sight of the first openly gay man in American professional team sports. Things are totally cool in the Brooklyn locker room. The media hordes are dwindling.

Check any account of a Nets game, even in the New York papers, and there will be scant mention of Collins, if any at all. He’s seeing very little court time (just 8.8 minutes per game), and we’ve reached the wretchedexcess point of reporters asking Collins to “talk about” his historic decision or ask “how important” it is to have broken ground. Tear down the circus tents, already. Move on to what’s happening on the floor.

Glory to the Nets, who signed Collins to a second 10-day contract Wednesday. Collins’ teammates have been beacons of tolerance, reflective of the times in big-city society. In the game that mattered most — Collins’ post-return debut against the Lakers at Staples Center — coach Jason Kidd boldly played him through most of the fourth quarter in a close (and eventually victorious) game.

Mikhail Prokhorov, the team’s billionaire owner who has a history of condemning the repressive antigay laws in his native Russia, now stands alone among his contemporaries. How many NBA owners now wish they could have orchestrated Collins’ arrival? He’s not a distraction, he’s not a sideshow, merely “a guy who only wants to rebound, block shots, set screens, take charges, put his body on the line, lay some hard fouls on people — just the easiest guy in the world to play with,” said Utah’s Richard Jefferson, a former Nets teammate.

“My life is just so much better,” Collins told reporters after his home-court debut Monday. “Living an authentic life and being accepted for who I am. This is my 13th year, and as far as the locker room goes, it’s just like it was my previous 12. Like nothing’s changed.”

Was that really so hard?