Barkley Blasts Homophobia in Sports After Jason Collins Death

Charles Barkley used the death of Jason Collins to call out anti-gay attitudes in America during Wednesday's edition of ESPN's Inside the NBA.

Collins, the NBA's first openly gay player, died this week at age 47 after an eight-month fight with Stage 4 glioblastoma. The aggressive brain cancer had been diagnosed last August. The 7-foot Stanford product played mostly in defensive roles over his career but gained fame in 2013 with a first-person coming-out essay in Sports Illustrated.

Barkley told viewers that America lives in a homophobic society. "Anybody who thinks that we don't have a bunch of gay players in all sports, they're just stupid," he said. "There is such animosity toward the gay community. That's what's really unfortunate. If you think there's not more gay players in the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA, you're just stupid."

Barkley added that gay people in the Black community get treated awful. His comments came amid grief in the NBA over Collins' death and that of Grizzlies forward Brandon Clarke in the same week.