NBA Player Released For Expressing Traditional Christianity

Here are some actions you can take in the NBA and still not get waived from your team: 

• Wield a gun while drunk at a strip club
• Knock up every woman in a four-mile radius of every NBA stadium
• Get arrested for alleged felony assault after concussing and strangling your girlfriend

What is the one thing you absolutely, positively cannot do, especially during Holy Week?

Let me introduce you to NBA guard Jaden Ivey, out of Purdue, where he scored 17 points and 4.9 rebounds per game as a sophomore, then was drafted fifth overall in 2022 by the Detroit Pistons.

Ivey is a good player. He posted 16 points, five assists, and four rebounds per game in his rookie year. In his second season, he scored 16 points per game. He was up to almost 18 points per game before he was injured in his third season and was then traded to the Chicago Bulls.

And that is where the trouble began.

This week, Jaden Ivey posted a video about the NBA’s Pride month. This, of course, is the month when the NBA and pretty much all NBA teams have nights dedicated to LGBTQ+-÷.

Jaden Ivey got himself in trouble because he posted a video talking about the NBA’s Pride Month on Instagram. He is a newly converted, religious Christian.

They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA,” he stated. “They proclaim it. They show it to the world. They say, ‘Come join us for Pride, for Pride month to celebrate unrighteousness.’ They proclaim it.

That seems like a fairly traditional Christian belief, that you should not actually celebrate pride in what is considered a sin by the vast majority of the religious world.

The immediate response of the Chicago Bulls was to can him. They announced that they had waived him due to “conduct detrimental to the team.”

Apparently, it was very, very bad for the team that he put out an Instagram video proclaiming the same thing that churches all over the country say all the time.

It was suggested that Ivy seems to be spiraling. Ivy has reported depression in the past; it is unclear whether he is in the midst of some sort of mental issue or not.

But if you’re going to cite evidence of a mental issue, this is not the best evidence. For him to declare that traditional religious belief says that you shouldn’t celebrate pride in what is considered a sin is not a spiral. 

I know some of the things that were put out there,” Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan said. “You know, I think it’s a situation for him where, you know, it’s on his own personal Instagram. I don’t want to get into what he put out there [on Instagram], but certainly for him I hope he’s OK. I’ve had conversations with Jaden and he’s always been about rehabbing his knee and trying to get on the court and wanting to play. But I think organizationally, there’s certain standards I think we want to have as an organization and live up to those each and every day.

Not a strong rebuke from the coach.

Nonetheless, the Bulls let him go because, of course, you cannot say anything that violates the precept of full-scale wokeness on these sorts of issues.

Jaden Ivey then went to Instagram Live to defend himself.

“They said my conduct is detrimental to the team, right?” he stated. “Why don’t they just say, we don’t agree with his stance on LGBT? Why didn’t they say that? How is it conduct detrimental to the team? What did I do to the team? What did I do to the players? I did nothing but practice with them, play with them, pass the ball to them. Good teammate to them, said ‘Good job. Good shot.’ I said these things to my teammates, was never detrimental to them. So why is it that the NBA and the Chicago Bulls say that I’m detrimental to the team? Because I believe the truth.? Because I know Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?”

He has a point. The team could have just said, “We disagree with his comments. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion.”

In the UFC, this happens all the time. Dana White routinely says this about people that he disagrees with in the UFC, people who say things that are morally bad. He will say, “You’re allowed to say what you want to say. I disagree with it, but it’s not my job to police the speech of other people.”

Jayden Mack/Getty Images

But the Bulls just waived Ivey, who also criticized Steph Curry. He went off on Steph Curry because Curry is frequently brought up by critics of traditional Christianity in the league as the example of what Christianity should look like, meaning that you cite the vaguest verses from the Bible while ignoring traditional moral practice. 

Ivy said:

That’s why you got Steph Curry. And he not even surrendered. And y’all believe he’s a Christian. Y’all believe he’s a Christian because he wrote Philippians 4:13. Y’all think he’s a Christian. He’s friendship with the world … He don’t know Jesus. And I pray he comes to the truth, that Him and his family will be saved in Jesus’ name, because all that stuff is not going to matter on Judgment Day, the rings he got.

I’m wondering precisely what Ivey said here that merits him being waived.

Let’s be real about this. If he were saying the opposite, that Pride night is the best, or came out as gay today, he’d be celebrated by the league. He’d be touted as one of the most important basketball players alive.

The NBA has a political bent, without a doubt, and are putting at risk an entire Christian audience and traditionalist audience that looks at this and says, Hold up, you get waived for saying that you don’t believe that Pride night ought to be celebrated, not because you did anything wrong, just because you said that you don’t agree with the league’s stance on these issues?

Back in January 2025, Ivey said,

My testimony is that, you know, when you’re away from Jesus, when you’re not close to him. And when you don’t have a relationship with him, Satan is there. He wants to just steal, kill and destroy. That’s all he comes here to do. He doesn’t want to give you peace. He wants to make your life hell. And that’s what I dealt with, you know, most of my life. When I came to know Jesus, my life, my living, I did  a whole 360. I have that peace. I have that joy that I’ve been searching for my entire life.

Let’s recall that the NBA had an entire controversy engulf it surrounding whether they should have a night honoring a strip club in Atlanta. And that required the NBA to actually step in after weeks of consternation about whether or not that should happen.

But apparently, the minute you sound off and say, “Hey, Pride night, it’s got some connotations that are anti-Christian,” the minute you say that, you’re gone.

That’s an insane tactic from a league that wants to maximize its fan base, not minimize it. During Holy Week for Christians, that’s an astonishing stance by the league. 

I’m hopeful that some other team will give Jaden Ivey another chance. 

Because man, the Chicago Bulls really screwed up here in a major, major way.