Collins receives warm welcome

Jason Collins has a week and a half to prove himself to the Brooklyn Nets.

He signed a 10-day contract, one of the toughest deals in sports because it gives non-superstars almost no time to impress their coaches and teammates in hopes of sticking around.

With this group, Collins did that long ago: The Nets locker room is filled with former teammates who have already accepted the league’s first openly gay player and his on-court habits, which are the ones that matter most to them.

“Guys already know what to know to expect from me. It’s like, OK, he’s not going to magically have a 40-inch vertical [leap] and shoot 3s,” Collins said.

That made it the ideal place for his historic return to the NBA.

Perhaps, as numerous players insisted after Collins came out in a Sports Illustrated article last April, athletes were ready to accept a gay teammate. Maybe Collins would have been welcomed anywhere he signed.

But maybe not. As the bullying scandal involving the Miami Dolphins proved, the locker room can be a place where abusive language can divide a team and threaten to derail a season, to say nothing of the fallout for the players themselves.

The loudest voices with the Nets, however, belong to the team leaders, and they’ve already made up their mind about Collins.

Old teammate Jason Kidd coaches the team. Collins played with Joe Johnson (Little Rock Central, Arkansas Razorbacks) in Atlanta and Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce in Boston, and they are now the respected veterans in Brooklyn.

“I know those guys over there in Brooklyn, KG and those guys, played with him in Boston, and they’re going to welcome him with open arms,” said Oklahoma City center Kendrick Perkins, who also played with Pierce and Garnett with the Celtics. “It’s a veteran locker room, so they’re very mature, and they’re going to accept him.”

Collins played 6 ½ years with the Nets, where some in the organization still call him“Twin,” his nickname when he played for them and reached the NBA Finals with Kidd in 2003 and 2003. One of his first calls when he came out last April was to Kidd.

“You look at all the connections that Jason has,” Kidd said, naming not only Jason Collins’ former teammates but also some who played with his twin brother, Jarron, “and also being that he played with the Nets before, so I think this is a great opportunity for him.”