At 9 a.m. last Friday the writer Franz Lidz drove to the Los Angeles home of Jason Collins with a completed draft of a story on which the two had collaborated two days earlier. When he arrived, Lidz was introduced to Collins' mother and father; his twin brother, Jarron; and a high school classmate. They, along with Jason, would have final approval. As the group gathered around the kitchen table, Lidz's daughter Daisy offered a suggestion: Why not have Jason read the story aloud? And so he began:

I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay. ...



Shortly after 8 on Easter morning, Lidz, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated from 1988 to 2007, phoned me at my home. Representatives of an acti ... Read more »