Bulls cut Jaden Ivey after anti-Pride rant (but not because he’s Christian)
The NBA team didn’t punish Ivey for his faith. They dumped a struggling player who became a locker-room liability
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The Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey on Monday after he made comments on Instagram disparaging Pride Month in the NBA… all because he’s a Christian.
But despite with right-wing propagandists are already saying, Ivey wasn’t fired because of his Christian beliefs.
Even if you know nothing about basketball, here’s the relevant information: Ivey was one of the top draft picks a couple of years ago. He started out strong, but after a major injury in early 2025, and a less-than-stellar return, the Detroit Pistons traded him to the Bulls this past February. In the few games he played, his contributions were minimal, so the Bulls decided to shut him down for the season last week, giving him more time for rehab.
Over the past few days, he’s been posting hour-long crazy-ass religious rants on Instagram. Like several of them. And this anti-Pride Month rant was just a snippet of the delusion.
The world can proclaim LGBTQ… They proclaim Pride Month in the NBA. They proclaim it… They show it to the world. They say come… join us for Pride, for Pride Month, to celebrate unrighteousness.
They proclaim. They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it in the streets. Unrighteousness. So how is it that one can’t speak righteousness?… How are they to say that… this man is crazy?
That was on top of a separate Instagram sermon in which he declared Catholicism a false religion.
And none of this was a shock either because he’s also like this during press conferences:
Before Ivey even stepped foot on Chicago soil there were rumblings from Detroit that the shooting guard was a “preacher.” They undersold it. His interviews became sermons in which he was asking reporters if they’ve been “saved” and if they “fornicated before marriage.”
My bad, brah, I was just checking in on how your knee felt.
Ivey was baptized in June of 2024, and he began talking like a deranged lunatic not long after that, using his platform to evangelize at every possible opportunity, even when it had nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Chicago Tribune reporter Julia Poe explained why this situation was different than the typical statements from other Christian athletes:
Religion — and, specifically, Christianity — is not a taboo topic in an NBA locker room. Teams provide chapel services. Players read the Bible before games and praise Jesus after them. It takes a remarkable level of extremity for a player’s faith to become remotely notable in this type of environment; somehow, Ivey accomplished that feat.
That’s why the anti-Pride rant was the last straw. The NBA is a private organization. They can fire you for bad behavior (though, like all professional sports organizations, they have a long history of looking the other way, too).
The Bulls announced on Monday—about five hours after his rant was posted—that they were waiving Ivey for “conduct detrimental to the team.”
The problem with Ivey is that he’s a bigot who’s also not a great player (relative to others in the NBA). That makes him dispensable. Why deal with this kind of headache from someone who’s not even contributing to the team? The team, and the NBA overall, has a brand to protect and this guy isn’t worth defending.
The Bull’s coach took a more even-keeled approach:
Bulls head coach Billy Donovan said the organization has employees from “all different walks of life” and Ivey’s comments didn’t reflect the values of the franchise.
“Everybody comes with their own personal experiences, but one is we’ve got to all be professional,” Donovan said prior to Chicago’s game at San Antonio. “I think there’s got to be a high level of respect for one another, and we’ve got to help each other and then be accountable to those standards.”
He’s not entirely wrong there. Plenty of athletes hold unpopular views, but you have to set them aside to work with teammates who may disagree. You’re getting paid a lot of money to do that. If you’re not a star player, those unpopular views make you far more of a liability. After all, if you care about human rights, how could you possibly respect and play with a teammate who doesn’t? Ivey would just bring everyone down to his level of hate.
The weird thing is that professional sports is full of Christians. You hear them in every postgame interview. You see them shoving Jesus into every press conference to the point that they give Jesus more credit for their victories than their own teammates and coaches. So to counter what conservatives are already saying, no one’s getting rid of Ivey because he’s Christian. They’re sacking him because he’s a bigot AND he’s not contributing to the team. Christianity itself isn’t the problem, and anyone who’s ever watched professional or college sports knows it.
(Among reporters who cover the Bulls, the sentiment to his firing appeared to be appreciation all around. After all, they would much rather talk about the disastrous decision by executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas to trade for Ivey, and all the red flags that came with him, in the first place.)
Ivey has every right to throw away his NBA career—and paycheck—for the ability to post wild sermons on social media. He isn’t owed a spot on a professional team. But if he’s not a superstar, he’s going to have to deal with the consequences. Hell, even commentator Stephen A. Smith—who famously has contrarian opinions on everything—defended the Bulls’ decision.
Maybe Ivey saw the writing on the wall: He’s never going to be an NBA superstar, so why not make the switch to a Christian martyr now? It’s never too late to start a second career as a motivation speaker on the evangelical circuit, telling gullible audiences that you were fired for speaking about your faith, even though that’s a lie. Conservative Christians eat up that narrative and they’ll never bother to look into the details.
It’s a much better option than finishing rehab and trying to get back on another roster. At this point, Ivey’s flaws are out in the open for everyone to see.
Christian bigot behaves badly. Faces negative consequences. Cries "persecution!" Rinse. Repeat.
Jaden Ivey thinks about men having sex more than I do and I'm gay.