NBA Commissioner Adam Silver blasted Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving on Thursday, calling out the participant’s “reckless determination” to put up “deeply offensive antisemitic materials.”
Irving has been roundly criticized since final week when he tweeted a hyperlink to the 2018 film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which relies on Ronald Dalton’s ebook of the identical title.
Rolling Stone journal stated the film is crammed with “antisemitic tropes” and seemingly adopts concepts which are extra according to excessive factions of the Black Hebrew Israelites, which have lengthy been related to homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“Kyrie Irving made a reckless determination to put up a hyperlink to a movie containing deeply offensive antisemitic materials,” Silver stated in assertion.
Irving stated Wednesday he opposes all types of bigotry as he and the Brooklyn Nets each promised to every donate $500,000 towards anti-hate teams. Nonetheless, the participant has not offed an unequivocal apology.
“Whereas we recognize the truth that he agreed to work with the Brooklyn Nets and the Anti-Defamation League to fight antisemitism and different types of discrimination, I’m disenchanted that he has not supplied an unqualified apology and extra particularly denounced the vile and dangerous content material contained within the movie he selected to publicize,” Silver stated.
The commissioner vowed to make his issues identified in a face-to-face sit down with mercurial participant quickly: “I will probably be assembly with Kyrie in individual within the subsequent week to debate this case.”
