{"id":2586802,"date":"2026-04-03T08:12:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nba-doubles-down-on-woke-by-punishing-jaden-ivey-for-his-christianity\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T08:14:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:14:32","slug":"nba-doubles-down-on-woke-by-punishing-jaden-ivey-for-his-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nba-doubles-down-on-woke-by-punishing-jaden-ivey-for-his-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Doubles Down On Woke By Punishing Player For His Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnba-doubles-down-on-woke-by-punishing-jaden-ivey-for-his-christianity%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2586802&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The piece argues that the Chicago Bulls\u2019 decision to waive Jaden Ivey after he publicly opposed the NBA\u2019s Pride Month promotion illustrates a broader pattern of punishing players for personal beliefs rather than for on-court merit. The author contends the move was described as \u201cconduct detrimental to the team,\u201d but views this as a pretext for silencing dissent, claiming the NBA tolerates far more serious misconduct while policing speech that conflicts with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/america-first-legal-pursuing-lawsuit-against-critical-race-theory-stephen-miller\/\" title=\"America First Legal Pursuing Lawsuit Against Critical Race Theory: Stephen Miller\">left-leaning agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The essay draws comparisons to other high-profile cases, notably Kyrie Irving and Colin Kaepernick, to claim a double standard in how athletes are treated based on political or religious views. It argues that free speech should be allowed in a personal capacity without jeopardizing a player\u2019s career, and that performance should be the primary measure for retention. The piece also criticizes the league&#8217;s credibility, pointing to examples like the NBA\u2019s gambling scandal and a documentary about Giannis Antetokounmpo as evidence of perceived hypocrisy and politicization.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the author calls on players to defend Ivey and urges franchise owners to stay out of politics to restore credibility to the sport. The article is attributed to Auguste Meyrat, who writes on related topics for The Federalist and other outlets.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>After Jaden Ivey expressed opposition to the NBA&rsquo;s promotion of &ldquo;Pride Month&rdquo; on the basis of his Christian faith, the Chicago Bulls <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nba\/bulls\/2026\/03\/30\/chicago-bulls-waive-jaden-ivey-conduct-detrimental-team\/89393832007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">immediately waived<\/a> him. This means that after a 48-hour period, he will become a free agent who can try out for other teams. Lest anyone misattribute this cut to Ivey&rsquo;s inability to play due to injuries, the Bulls made it abundantly clear they waived Ivey due to purported &ldquo;conduct detrimental to the team.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, the word &ldquo;conduct&rdquo; is misleading here because it implies some sort of egregious activity, like committing a felony or assaulting someone. But, as we all know, the NBA is <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/03\/31\/nba-protects-players-accused-of-violent-crimes-while-targeting-christians-for-saying-christian-things\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">perfectly fine<\/a> with giving a pass to <a href=\"https:\/\/nbacrimelibrary.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">violent felons<\/a>. Where the league draws the line is speech that goes against its leftist agenda.<\/p>\n<p>Ivey is certainly not the first player to be targeted for dissent. In 2021, the Brooklyn Nets <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/kyrie-irving-gave-up-100-million-contract-nvaccinated-2022-9?op=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">benched star point guard Kyrie Irving<\/a> for refusing to take the Covid shot &mdash; he was entirely justified in his objections, by the way &mdash; which ended up costing him more than $100 million. Although the team&rsquo;s leadership pretended this had to do with health concerns, it seemed more like a pretext to force an outspoken player into submission. This is just one example, but the NBA had long distinguished itself as the &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/10\/07\/opinion\/nba-china-hong-kong.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wokest sports league<\/a>,&rdquo; even as it routinely kowtowed to Chinese authoritarians.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who doubts whether leftist politics played a role in Ivey&rsquo;s dismissal can review what happened with the most famous dissenter in modern sports: NFL quarterback <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nfl\/news\/colin-kaepernick-kneeling-protest-timeline\/xktu6ka4diva1s5jxaylrcsse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Colin Kaepernick<\/a>. In 2016, Kaepernick decided to sit on the bench during the national anthem to protest racism. As he put it, &ldquo;I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.&rdquo; Somehow, being a <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >mixed-race man earning millions<\/a> for playing football did not prevent him from confidently accusing his country of oppressive racism on national television.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Ivey, Kaepernick&rsquo;s team didn&rsquo;t punitively bench him or cut him for his speech. Quite the opposite. The NFL defended him and feted him as a civil rights hero, and he signed a <a href=\"https:\/\/about.netflix.com\/en\/news\/netflix-announces-a-new-dramatic-limited-series-on-colin-kaepernnicks-high-school-years-created-by-kaepernnick-and-ava-du-vernay-colin-in-black-white\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lucrative contract with Netflix<\/a>. Eventually, his stardom petered out as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/vick-kaepernicks-out-nfl-because-he-sucks-robert-kraychik\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">quality of his game deteriorated<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/vick-kaepernicks-out-nfl-because-he-sucks-robert-kraychik\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Had he been a better football player<\/a>, he would have easily continued his career, but this became unnecessary when the world honored him much more for his anti-American activism.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is to argue that Ivey should receive the Kaepernick treatment or that Kaepernick deserved the Ivey treatment. As Americans, they are both entitled to their opinions, even if they are also professional athletes who are supposed to represent their organizations.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, there should be a clear line of demarcation between what players express in their personal capacity versus their professional capacity, but not an ideological wall of separation between &ldquo;acceptable&rdquo; and &ldquo;unacceptable&rdquo; speech.<\/p>\n<p>If allowing free speech in a personal capacity were the policy, Ivey would still be playing for the Bulls, with few people caring what he had to say since he streams it all from his own <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/german-broadcaster-suspends-workers-amid-anti-israel-antisemitism-probe\/\" title=\"German Broadcaster Suspends Workers amid anti-Israel, Antisemitism Probe\">private social media account<\/a>. Meanwhile, Kaepernick, speaking in a professional capacity, would have been quietly pulled to the side and told to shut his mouth and post his grievances on his Instagram if he wanted to. None of this should have anything to do with expressing the right opinions, but simply keeping fans happy.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the emphasis should be on athletic performance, not speech. Whatever a player says on the internet is significantly less important than what he does in a game. True, it was bad enough that the NFL defended Kaepernick&rsquo;s activism, but it would have been far worse if San Fransico&rsquo;s leadership had kept him on the 49ers roster despite his mediocrity on the field. By the same token, Ivey should only have been cut for falling short of performance expectations, not because he publicly stated his Christian beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>One could argue that the outcomes are effectively the same, but the reasons still matter because a sports league&rsquo;s entire credibility rests on its commitment to athletic merit. If players are promoted or punished because of their political or cultural viewpoints rather than their skill and effort, then the whole sport becomes entirely discredited and arbitrary. It puts into question every game. Did this team win because they were better, or because the NBA thought it would look better for them to win?<\/p>\n<p>For many former basketball fans (including myself), the NBA already feels about as real as professional wrestling &mdash; and this was <em>before<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6788069\/2025\/11\/25\/nba-players-coaches-gamblers-betting-investigation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">last year&rsquo;s gambling scandal<\/a>. Certain players and franchises are clearly favored over others, and the leftist messaging is ubiquitous. One example is a <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/03\/04\/nba-star-giannis-antetokounmpos-greatest-gift-was-family-not-athleticism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recent documentary<\/a> on the Greek-Nigerian basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo. Despite Antetokounmpo&rsquo;s earning millions, receiving endless publicity, and having access to world-class facilities, the documentary somehow cast his rise from obscurity to NBA superstardom as a story about anti-immigration sentiments in the West.<\/p>\n<p>After a while, the sanctimony and hypocrisy become unsustainable. People stop believing and eventually stop watching, which is ultimately a shame. The NBA&rsquo;s amazingly talented players will now lose potential audiences because one franchise decided (with the tacit approval of the league) to virtue signal by punishing one player for voicing disagreement with left-wing ideology because of his faith. Not only should these other players defend Ivey (as <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/03\/31\/blessed-are-those-who-are-persecuted-christian-pro-athletes-stand-behind-jaden-ivey\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">some have<\/a>), but they should also demand that all franchise owners keep out of politics and let their players prove themselves on the court. This would restore some degree of credibility to a league in desperate need of it.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher and freelance writer in the Dallas area. He is the founding editor of <a href=\"https:\/\/everymancommentary.substack.com\/\">The Everyman<\/a>, a senior contributor to The Federalist, and has written for essays for The American Mind, The Stream, Religion and Liberty, The Blaze, and elsewhere. He is also the host of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/everyman-commentary\/id1826292273\">The Everyman Commentary Podcast<\/a>.&#8221; Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/EverymanComm\">X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bulls cut Ivey over Pride Month stance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":2586803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Copy-of-Untitled-65.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[50410,5250,77079,7873,75200],"class_list":["post-2586802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-controversy-2","tag-faith","tag-league-policy","tag-nba","tag-woke-culture-2"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Copy-of-Untitled-65.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2586802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2586806,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586802\/revisions\/2586806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2586802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2586802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2586802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}