Jason Collins Met His Husband the Year He Came out as the NBA’s First Openly Gay Player

Former NBA player Jason Collins shared some incredibly heavy news in December 2025, revealing that he’s battling stage 4 brain cancer, specifically glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain tumor. Earlier in the year, Collins’s family had confirmed he had a tumor but intentionally kept the full extent of his diagnosis private. Collins later explained in an essay he wrote for ESPN that everything “came on incredibly fast,” though he clarified he’s facing it head-on.

He’s also undergoing extensive treatment, including care in Singapore, and has had his husband, Brunson Green, there with him every step of the way. Collins made history in 2013 as the first NBA player to come out as gay, and he’s continued to live openly and authentically ever since. Much of that journey after coming out has been shared with Green by his side. Here’s everything to know about Collins’s husband and what he does.

Jason Collins and his husband, Brunson Green, have only been married for a short time, tying the knot in May 2025. But their relationship goes much further back, all the way to when Collins came out to the world in an open letter for Sports Illustrated in 2013.

Not long after that, Collins and Green first crossed paths at a housewarming party in June 2013, though Collins was dating someone else at the time, as he later admitted in a 2014 interview with The New York Times. A few months later, in September 2013, Collins was single and ran into Green again at a party in Los Angeles. This time, things were different.

Collins recalled that since Green was leaving for Europe the next day, they decided to exchange information. And while he was gone, Collins admitted, “I was asking everyone: ‘Have you heard of this guy?’” — basically doing the usual background check you do when you start talking to someone you’re interested in but don’t know much about yet.

What started as a brief encounter quickly turned into something much bigger. The two remained together from that point on and eventually made it official, getting married in May 2025. In his essay shared with ESPN, Collins revealed that they wed in a ceremony in Austin, Texas, describing the day as something that “couldn’t have been more perfect.”

But then, just three months later, when the two were supposed to travel to the U.S. Open, Collins realized something wasn’t right. He was struggling to stay focused to the point that they missed their flight. After experiencing a series of unusual symptoms, Collins decided to undergo a CT scan at UCLA. Shortly after, he learned he had glioblastoma, which he explained “grows within a very finite, contained space — the skull — and it’s very aggressive and can expand.”

After receiving his diagnosis, Collins’s husband and family helped him through periods of confusion that he described as feeling like Dory from Finding Nemo. With their support and through treatment, he eventually came out of the “fog” and began thinking more clearly. Now, Collins continues his treatment with Green by his side, moving forward together and hoping for the best possible outcome.

Green is actually a pretty big name in TV and film. He’s widely known for producing The Help, which starred Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer. But that’s not the only title on his resume. He’s also worked on films like Fool’s Gold (1999), The Journeyman (2001), Walking Out (2017), and Regretting You (2025), per his IMDb. So yeah, it’s safe to say he’s a pretty big deal, both in television and film, and in Collins’s life.