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On Wednesday night, Kyrie Irving, the Brooklyn Nets, and the Anti-Defamation League released a statement regarding Irving’s recent antisemitic rhetoric.
The statement, while announcing Irving’s commitment to donating $500K of his $36M salary to charity, came far short of being an actual apology — so much so that NBA commissioner Adam Silver even said it wasn’t good enough.
Then, speaking to the media on Thursday, Irving somehow made things worse by being unable to emphatically apologize for his antisemitic actions in recent days.
“I cannot be anti-Semitic if I know where I come from,” Irving said during the Nets’ media session on Thursday, virtually tripling down on his antisemitic social media post promoting the film Hebrews to Negores Wake Up Black America.
Now, as a result of Irving’s Thursday press conference, the Anti-Defamation League has announced they will not be accepting Kyrie’s hollow donation. Furthermore, the Nets have suspended Irving without pay for at least five games, which could cost him $2 million in lost salary.
“We were optimistic but after watching the debacle of a press conference, it’s clear that Kyrie feels no accountability for his actions. The Anti-Defamation League cannot in good conscience accept (the donation),” says the official statement from ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
Among many other antisemitic tropes, the book/film that Irving promoted proliferates a fake Hitler quote about the “true Jews”, states that the six million Jewish people that were killed during the Holocaust is “one of five major falsehoods” and is a result of “the Jewish controlled media,” and also says that “many famous high-ranking Jews” have “admitted” to “worship[ing] Satan or Lucifer.”