Jaden Ivey started by thanking God. His thumbs were visible in the camera lens as he adjusted his phone while driving. A clear blue sky was visible through his sunroof. “Blessed morning,” he said, in a hushed tone, to the followers who’d tuned in to his Instagram livestream. “The Lord is gracious. Faithful.”
It hardly seemed like a conversation that would lead to him losing his job in the NBA. But after thanking God, Ivey quickly struck a different tone. He talked about how ESPN pundits were allowed to freely give their opinions about basketball and judge players without incident. “Do we not have free will to speak what we please?” he said, referring to the players themselves. Over the next 40 minutes, Ivey certainly didn’t have a problem speaking freely. He proclaimed that Christians were penalized for speaking righteousness while those in the LGBTQ community were celebrated for exhibiting “unrighteousness”; he used NBA teams hosting Pride nights as an example.
This was part of a particularly verbose period: In another livestream recorded later that day, he questioned the NBA superstar Stephen Curry’s Christian faith. And a couple of days before, in the comment section of a different livestream, he’d told a viewer their prayers wouldn’t be heard if they were a sinner, and he called Catholicism a “fake” religion.
On March 26, before Ivey had started streaming, the Bulls had decided that he wouldn’t play for the rest of the season because of a lingering knee issue. Shortly after the livestreams, once Ivey’s comments started to circulate both around and outside the league, the Bulls placed him on “waivers,” citing “conduct detrimental to the team.” (In the NBA, a player being put on “waivers” means they can be acquired by another team willing to assume responsibility for their contract; if no team claims them within a two-day period, they are released outright, allowing them to sign with anyone.)
Teams waive players all the time, but this transaction was received differently. In the aftermath, some of Ivey’s peers and conservative pundits came to his defense, accusing the Bulls of discriminating against Ivey because of his religion. TreVeyon Henderson, a running back for the New England Patriots, showed his support by posting a Bible verse. The conservative radio host Dana Loesch also wrote on X: “The Bulls are punishing a player for being a Christian. This is religious discrimination.” And the right-wing activist Riley Gaines wrote, “Consider me a Jaden Ivey fan.”
It’s rare to see an NBA player waived in this fashion. But Ivey’s split with the Bulls was a brutal reminder of how professional sports often work: swiftly, and unsentimentally. Ivey wasn’t some longtime favorite; he had only joined the team in February and had 13 days left on his contract at the time he was cut. Ivey was the fifth overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft for his original team, the Detroit Pistons, reflecting its high expectations for his talent. But during his short time in the NBA, his career has been sabotaged by injuries: a fractured left fibula, that tricky right knee.
As Ivey dealt with his injuries over the past few years, the Pistons emerged, without him, as one of the best teams in the NBA, making him the odd man out. The Bulls traded for Ivey in February because, on the surface, it looked like Chicago could potentially get a steal: Here was a young player who, despite the injuries, still had a lot of upside. Instead, the deal turned out to be a major bust. (On Monday, the Bulls fired general manager Marc Eversley and executive vice president Artūras Karnišovas, who were responsible for the Ivey trade.)
The bigger issue seemed to be that Ivey was becoming too much for the organization to deal with. Consider the optics of his dig at Catholicism: Roughly 29 percent of adults in the Chicago metro area identify as Catholic. (Pope Leo XIV is also from there.) Ivey’s criticism was even more curious given that his mother, Niele, is the coach of the Notre Dame women’s-basketball team. After he was cut, Ivey pushed back on the idea that he was a disruption, but reporters around the Bulls told a different story. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Ivey turned numerous routine media sessions into forums for his own beliefs. In Detroit, Ivey reportedly asked journalists whether they engaged in premarital sex; during one postgame press conference, he urged people to repent for their sins, because Jesus is coming back “when you least expect it.” One can only imagine the conversations he was having with teammates.
Many Christians took to social media to defend Ivey, saying that he was just spreading the gospel, as Christians are tasked to do. But Ivey’s religious outpouring came amid larger mental-health struggles that he’d recently been transparent about. Last year, after suffering his first devastating leg injury, Ivey was a guest on the Sports Spectrum podcast, where he shared that he was sexually abused as a child. During an interview with the PinPoint Podcast, after the Bulls had cut him, Ivey revealed that he contemplated suicide “multiple times” after he broke his fibula. In the past few days, Ivey has shared other personal details about life, admitting that he was once addicted to pornography and alcohol. After being waived, Ivey said his wife, Caitlyn, with whom he has three children, wasn’t communicating with him. (Caitlyn Ivey has disputed this characterization, and she was seen near him on a subsequent livestream.)
Regardless of what inspired his comments, what’s abundantly clear is that this is just another example of how, in sports, there is no room for error when you aren’t playing well. As Ivey himself pointed out during his interview with PinPoint, other NBA players have made homophobic remarks and haven’t been let go by their team. Ahead of the 2022–23 season, the Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards was fined $40,000 for using anti-gay language on his Instagram account. He apologized and that was that;Edwards would go on to average nearly 25 points a game that season.
A number of former and current NBA players have been fined or criticized for using homophobic language publicly or on social media, including Kevin Durant, Rajon Rondo, Allen Iverson, and the late Kobe Bryant. The difference is that those players had résumés that included NBA championships, MVP awards, and numerous All-Star appearances. Players of that caliber will always be given more leeway, and second chances. A 24-year-old who has played in fewer than a full season’s games over the past two years is expendable. Ivey’s potential wasn’t enough to protect him from consequences, especially when the Bulls have gotten to the playoffs only twice in the past 10 years.
[Read: How economists took over the NBA]
Besides, the argument that Ivey is being unjustly persecuted for his faith doesn’t hold much weight if you look elsewhere in the league. The Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac is one of the most outspoken Christians in the NBA. In 2020, Isaac cited his religious views as the reason he didn’t wear a Black Lives Matter T-shirt or kneel during the national anthem with his fellow players. Isaac also started a Christian-based athletic brand, criticized the Biden administration for celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility, and spoke at Charlie Kirk’s Believers’ Summit in 2024. But Isaac remained on the Magic through all of this. It might’ve helped that the Magic is owned by the DeVos family, which is known for being deeply religious. Isaac was also helped because he contributed to the team’s success, and because his beliefs didn’t seem to be an issue in that locker room.
In Ivey, some see a martyr and an example of the NBA’s misplaced priorities. They wonder how Ivey is unemployed but someone like the Charlotte Hornets forward Miles Bridges still has a team, despite serving a lengthy suspension after pleading no contest to assaulting the mother of his children in front of them. (“I want to apologize to everybody for the pain and embarrassment that I have caused everyone, especially my family,” Bridges said in a 2023 statement.) Supporters note that Ivey’s Bulls teammate Josh Giddey was under investigation for allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with a high-school girl in 2024 while he was a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder. (Giddey has never spoken publicly about the allegations, and charges were never filed.) That didn’t stop Chicago from trading for Giddey and then later signing him to a four-year, $100 million extension.
In sports, not everyone is treated the same, but the same rule applies to all: You can’t be a problem and not produce. When the head coach of the Bulls, Billy Donovan, was asked by reporters about Ivey’s dismissal, he expressed empathy for his former player. But, he noted, “there are certain standards I think we want to have as an organization and try to live up to those each and every day.” And those standards usually aren’t rooted in morality.
The post Why Jaden Ivey Was Cut appeared first on The Atlantic.
