Jason Collins -- Twitter Death Threats After Gay Announcement

It's not all love for the first major (active) pro athlete to come out of the closet ... NBA player Jason Collins has also been the target of online death threats since announcing he's gay.

The homophobic threats began appearing on Twitter right after Jason's big coming-out interview with Sports Illustrated. Among the venom ...

-- "Yous a dead f****t talkn on tv Boy."
-- "Listening to Jason Collins describe his gayness as 'beautiful' makes me wanna puke. And kill him."
-- "Jason collins comes out the closet! Kill that biiitttchhhh!!!"
-- "First jason collins say he gay.. Now he on espn w lipgloss on kill him now !!!"
-- "Jason Collins should get the death penalty lol how u a 7 foot gay dude lol the west is crazy smh"

In the S.I. article, Collins says he doesn't expect everyone to embrace him ... but it's unclear if he expected this kind of hatred.

We reached out to Collins for comment -- so far, no word back.