NBA

Nets expected to sign Collins to another 10-day contract

Jason Collins isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The Nets are expected to sign Collins to a second 10-day contract Wednesday, a formality after the initial pact he signed Feb. 23, when he made history by becoming the first openly gay player in any of the four major American professional sports, expires on Tuesday.

“No, I can’t because I don’t know anything about that,” Collins said when asked about getting another 10-day deal, which Yahoo! Sports first reported. “I’ll let my agent do all of the business side of basketball. Arn Tellem, in my mind, he’s the best agent in the business.

“I’ll let him handle his job, and I’ll do my job, which is the basketball.”

Although right now the Nets are only going to sign Collins for 10 more days, it’s hard to envision a scenario in which the Nets won’t keep him for the remainder of the season, given both the historical ramifications of his signing, his longtime friendship with Nets coach Jason Kidd and his having been a teammate with several of the team’s veterans.

“He’s been great on and off the court,” Kidd said. “That’s between management and his agent about another signing. I think he has one more day before they can talk about that.

“[Collins] is a good friend of mine, and he’s a basketball player but he’s also a great person. That’s why we wanted him on this team. We thought he could help us win.”

Collins held a press conference before Monday night’s game against the Bulls, his first home game since his signing.

It was a bit smaller media crowd than the one he faced in Los Angeles immediately after signing, and Collins said he’s already begun to see the attention surrounding his return to the league begin to recede. He said he expects that to continue.

“As I’ve said before, there’s only so many ways you can write the story about the off-the-court stuff,” he said. “Eventually the focus will only be on the basketball, and how the team is doing.”

Collins’ entrance into each of the first four games he had played in was met with polite applause by road fans. He said he was looking forward to seeing how the hometown fans responded to him Monday night.

“I’m sure it’ll be an exciting arena,” he said. “I have a lot of friends and family in town, [lots of] ticket requests I had to deal with a lot of that, so now that’s all settled I’m going to go out and focus as much on the game.

“In regards to the crowd it’s always nice to play in front of your home fans and get that support, so I look forward to that.”