In the blink of an eye Jason Collins has gone from being an obscure journeyman NBA player to an historic role model who has drawn comparison with Jackie Robinson and has won garlanded tweets from the sublime (Eva Longoria) to the ridiculous ( Ricky Gervais). And all become he has come out as gay, the last great taboo in the studly world of American male professional sport.

Collins is 7ft0in and a bruiser and even people who follow the NBA would strain to vividly recall the big man as he made an art form out of not being noticed on the court. Instead, he carved out a respectable if unspectacular career by carrying out the heavy-duty work of setting screens, blocking other behemoths and, as he acknowledges himself, fouling people: the one statistic in which he led the league of late was in personal fouls.

He is, as his former coach Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics testified, the “pro’s pro”. He thrives on the kind of selfless sacrifice which gives the beautiful stars the nanosecond of extra time they need to make their shots. There have been many players like him down the years, so terrifically grounded in the technical basics of the game that they survive in the NBA long after more talented, temperamental players have burned out. They leave very wealthy and are forgotten.

But Collins's very clearly crafted and persuasive essay in this week's edition of Sports Illustrated has earned him a place in NBA lore as permanent and valuable as those who are awarded a place in the Hall of Fame. Everyone rushed to congratulate Collins on the courage of his decision.

He took a personal call from Barack Obama, who also commented publicly on the matter. Dozens of Collins's former team-mates voiced their support. The most influential of those is Kobe Bryant who, since being stricken with an Achilles injury, has become an entertaining posters in the Tweet universe. 'Don't suffocate who you are because of the ignorance of others' was Kobe's advice.

Relentless brilliance
But in the deluge of congratulations, it was the message from Martina Navratilova that caught the eye. '1981 was the year for me. 2013 is the year for you.'

The world of sport has changed enormously since the former Czech star transformed women’s sport with her relentless brilliance. Even those of us who were children at the time remember the sense that Navratilova was different; that she had slightly less time for the adherence to prettiness and femininity that was supposed to characterise women’s tennis.

Nobody was going to talk about lesbianism on Centre Court in those days, least of all commentator Dan Maskell. When Navratilova confirmed her sexual orientation in 1981, she was 25-years-old, one of the most famous female athletes in the world and also a Czechoslovak citizen who had relocated to the USA in the midst of the Cold War. It would have been easier for her to do what others did at that time and say nothing. But she spoke out.

Her message of congratulations seemed to contain a wonderfully subtle barb at the general vanity of the macho sports culture – a world which which includes the venerable president Obama, who can’t step onto a hoops court without getting a competitive glint in his eye.

So 32 years after her announcement, a man finally steps up to bat. For instance, in April, the world’s best women’s basketball player, a 7ft 0in 18- year-old phenomenon named Britney Griner, announced she is gay. Griner is such an exceptional player that Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks team, half jokingly suggested he might draft her to play in the men’s league.

Nobody paid much attention at her declaration: the WNBA has had several other players announce that they are gay and anyway, the sport gets little attention.

But Griner is a role model for young women and she spoke about the difficulties she experienced in adolescence – both in being the tallest person in any room as well about her confusion over her sexuality. So the direction she has taken in her life – not to mention her wardrobe, which is straight from the kd lang school of masculine couture – has taken courage.

But she got no phone call from the president, no tweet from Ricky Gervais. She is just another gay chick.

What Collins’s announcement has provoked is the nationwide sound of men clapping themselves on the back for being understanding and liberal and adult and for showing a bit of brotherly respect for the whole gay thing.

David Stern, the long-serving commissioner who has transformed the NBA into a globally successful juggernaut, must be turning cartwheels. Collins' announcement is like the Berlin wall coming down. It is only a matter of time before other declarations come from the worlds of baseball, hockey and American football. But the NBA has led the way!

Shots or blocks
One of the most famous NBA statistics has nothing to do with shots or blocks: it concerns the late Wilt 'the Stilt' Chamberlain's claim that he slept with 20,000 women along the way. The expectation in the NBA is that players will be playas. Any deviation from that is considered suspect.

It is little over 20 years since Magic Johnson had to retire because of the explicit unease expressed by team-mates after he announced he had tested positive for HIV. And when Jon Amaechi confirmed that he was gay after retiring from the NBA in 2007, former NBA star Tim Hardaway baldly declared that he “hated” gay people and wouldn’t want a gay man on his team. Hardaway was, of course, condemned, but as Amaechi observed, at least his homophobia was explicit and was just one of many messages he received containing a similarly venomous tone. Many wished him dead.

The American belief system, be it religious or political, is such a complex latticework that there is undoubtedly a considerable percentage of the population that is appalled by the fact the president is conferring hero status on a gay man. It stands to reason that several NBA players – many of whom observe an old-school biblical Christianity – are privately dismayed by the revelation.

Collins’ story is far from the stereotypical NBA tale of a black kid emerging from the grey ghetto because of an irrepressible basketball talent. As he notes in his essay, the first person he told was his aunt, a superior court judge in Los Angeles. He is a Stanford graduate and counts Bill Clinton among his friends: an exceptional career in basketball is perhaps just one of several good careers he may have had.

And his announcement also reads like a beautiful if inadvertent chess move. Collins is old for a ball player and he is a free agent: the chances are that no team might have wanted him next year. But now that he has become a symbolic figure for the path towards enlightenment of the NBA - and the heterosexual American male in general - the NBA executives will want him in their league next season. (Collins’ jersey, number 98, was chosen in remembrance of the year 1998, when two particularly vicious murders of gay men were carried out. It is sure to sell like hot cakes now.)

The NBA can’t afford to ignore its first gay player. Unless, of course, Dallas drafts Britney Griner after all.