Jason Collins of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets made history on Sunday by becoming the first openly gay athlete to play in any of the four major American pro sports.
Collins totaled just one rebound, two fouls and zero points in his four minutes of play. But his jersey — number 98, which has a particularly significant connotation — is outselling LeBron James, Kevin Durant and the rest of the NBA's biggest superstars.
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Fanatics, the Internet's largest sports merchandise retailer, sold more Collins' Nets jerseys than any other NBA-related item (covering everything from Blake Griffin jerseys, to Miami Heat T-shirts, to NBA coffee mugs) on Wednesday, a company rep told Mashable on Thursday.
On Thursday, Collins uniforms were the NBA's top-selling jersey for both online and in-person purchases, league spokesperson Amanda Thorn told Mashable. That's been true since Tuesday, the first day Collins jerseys became available for purchase.
If you think 98 is an odd number to see on the basketball court, you are correct. But it holds special significance for a player with a unique place in history. Collins began wearing the number after joining the Boston Celtics in 2012, before publicly revealing his sexual orientation in April of last year. He explained the story behind his number in the first-person coming-out piece he penned for Sports Illustrated:
The number has great significance to the gay community. One of the most notorious antigay hate crimes occurred in 1998. Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student, was kidnapped, tortured and lashed to a prairie fence. He died five days after he was finally found. That same year the Trevor Project was founded. This amazing organization provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention to kids struggling with their sexual identity. Trust me, I know that struggle. I've struggled with some insane logic. When I put on my jersey I was making a statement to myself, my family and my friends.

In this 1999 file photo, a cross made of stones rests below the fence in Laramie, Wyo., where student Matthew Shepard was tied up and pistol whipped into a coma a year earlier. He died from his injuries and police said he was targeted because he was gay. Congress passed anti-hate crime legislation bearing his name in 2009.
Image: Ed Andrieski/Associated Press
Neither the NBA nor fanatics released actual units sold for Collins jerseys or those of other players, a hidden stat veteran sports marketer Joe Favorito says could diminish the significance of Collins' jerseys being sold in many fans' minds.
"It's a nice show of solidarity and support both for the cause and for what he's done," Favorito told Mashable. "But it's so hard to tell how much he's actually sold and how much that means; what does LeBron sell on a typical weekday in February? But that's really secondary here — what's important is that people are talking about it."
The Net signed Collins to a 10-day contract on Sunday. Ten-day deals are typically used by title-contending teams who want to test out veteran help they may sign to longer deals for the playoffs. While players on 10-day contracts rarely, if ever, have official merchandise for sale, the league made an exception in Collins' case. (Factoring into that decision, surely, was that a player on a 10-day contract would never typically outsell global megastars like James and Durant.)
Collins may well get cut by the Nets soon, rendering his history-making stint an abbreviated one; then again, the Nets could keep him around and make an extended playoff run. Such is Collins' precarious professional position. He's 35 years old (making him almost a senior citizen in the NBA) and statistically unimpressive, but widely regarded as a model teammate and consummate professional.
"It's the NBA, and you've got to have the ability as well as the story in order to stick around," Favorito said.
No matter what happens between now and the NBA season's end in June, one thing will be certain: Those number-98 Nets jerseys will be collectors' items like no piece of sports apparel before or since.
"Hopefully soon enough, the jersey of the 15th player on a team sells like the jersey of the 15th player of the team, regardless of if he's gay or straight," Favorito said.
The Nets' next game is Thursday night in Denver against the host Nuggets.