The Chicago Bulls’ waiving of Jaden Ivey is more of a PR measure than an inclusivity win
Last week, the most interesting thing happened to the unremarkable 2026 Chicago Bulls: 24-year-old shooting guard Jaden Ivey riled up the world via his social media account, taking shots at the NBA for promoting something as “unrighteous” as Pride Month in June.
“The world proclaims LGBTQ, right?” he says in his unhinged livestream. “They proclaim Pride Month, and the NBA does, too. They show it to the world. They say, ‘Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.’ They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it on the streets. Unrighteousness.”
Detrimental to the team
Naturally, the Bulls decided to waive the former first-round draft pick from Purdue University, citing that he was performing “conduct detrimental to the team.”
More keen-eyed basketball observers note, however, that Ivey wasn’t a huge loss to the team after putting up mediocre stats since joining the Bulls before the trade deadline in February—and he had already been ruled out for the rest of the season due to an injury to his left knee.
“[The Chicago Bulls management] said my conduct is detrimental to the team,” he says in another livestream, following his waiving on March 30. Players and management have noted an increase in Ivey’s preaching and evangelizing behavior in the locker room, with some reporting that he would interrogate reporters about their private lives—all of which likely contributed to the “detrimental conduct” case.
“Why didn’t they just say, ‘We don’t agree with his stance on LGBTQ’? Why didn’t they say that?” he asks. “How is it conduct detrimental to the team? What did I do to the team? What did I do to the players?”
“There’s a certain level of expectations and standards that are here,” Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan says. “Everybody comes with their own personal experiences, right? But we have to all be professional, there has to be a high level of respect for one another, and we’ve got to help each other and be accountable to those standards.”
Naturally, such a controversial and slightly high-profile sports release has already stoked the flames of yet another conservative vs. progressive culture war, especially in the still-hypermasculine world of professional sports. You wouldn’t have to look very far on social media to find a lot of people, especially grown conservative men, defending Ivey’s ramblings.
This comes after the headways made by popular sports drama series “Heated Rivalry” late last year, when it came to queer acceptance and representation in pro sports. While it would have been naïve to expect that “Heated Rivalry” would change conservative sentiments overnight, it’s still a positive development for the Bulls to have punished Ivey’s discriminatory behavior.
The PR liability
Others, however, aren’t willing to give the Bulls management that much credit.
Former NFL player Ryan Russell, the league’s first openly bisexual player, writes in The Guardian, supporting the theory that Ivey was waived because he wasn’t a very productive part of the team—had he been a bigger star and a more important asset, they would have found a way to mitigate the damage of his words and keep him.
And beyond the homophobic rants, another theorized reason for the Bulls’ decision was not just Ivey’s stance against the LGBTQIA+ community, but also deranged rants about Catholicism, which would have put the team in quite a precarious position, as Pope Leo XIV is a proud Chicago native.
The aftermath
Since being released last week, Ivey has doubled down on his brand of religious extremism. He’s been spotted on the streets of Chicago, continuing to preach his religious message.
Some have speculated that Ivey could be suffering from a form of religious psychosis, which is characterized by “significant behavioral changes” relating to religious beliefs.
And if it is true that this behavior is him acting out due to mental health issues—religious psychosis or not—I hope that he can get the help he needs. All jokes and indignation aside, professional sports is still a mentally and emotionally demanding job, as much as it is heavily physical, and Ivey would not be the first or last athlete to bear the weight of such a career.
We may not like him at the moment, but somewhere deep down, I still care about the guy on a minimal level as a fellow athlete and as a (former) Chicago Bull, my home team in the NBA. I hope he can get whatever help he needs, when he wants it, and someday apologize to the people he has hurt and made uncomfortable.
And I hope that other athletes get the same grace as superstars do when they slip—when they deserve it.
