Useful
The conservative media machine doesn’t want Jaden Ivey to get help. It wants him to keep talking.
If you don’t follow the NBA, here’s the short version of what happened this week: a 24-year-old basketball player named Jaden Ivey got cut from the Chicago Bulls, and the right-wing media machine turned him into a martyr overnight. The longer version is a lot sadder than that, and a lot more complicated than any of the people championing him want you to know.
Ivey was the fifth overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. He spent his first few seasons with the Detroit Pistons, then got traded to the Bulls in early February. He played four games for Chicago, averaging 11.5 points, before being shut down for the rest of the season last Thursday with a knee injury. He wasn’t under contract for next year. So, at the point when all of this started, he was an injured player on an expiring deal sitting at home.
And that’s when he started going live on Instagram. Multiple lengthy streams in the span of a few days, each running over 30 minutes. In one, he called the NBA’s promotion of Pride Month “unrighteous.” In another, he called Catholicism “a false religion“ and said it “does not lead to salvation in Jesus Christ” (a notable thing to say when your mother is the head women’s basketball coach at Notre Dame, a Catholic university). He told the team that “Jesus healed my knee“ and tried to fly himself to a game the Bulls had already ruled him out of. ESPN reported that team staff had been describing him as “preachy” in the locker room for weeks before the rants even started.
On Monday, the Bulls waived him. He immediately went live again, this time from an airplane, and called the organization “liars.” He said Stephen Curry, one of the most openly Christian athletes in professional sports, “don’t know Jesus.” He said all of Curry’s rings, LeBron’s rings, Jordan’s rings won’t matter on Judgment Day. By Tuesday, he was on a podcast hosted by an evangelist with nearly 100,000 YouTube subscribers, where he disclosed that he’d attempted suicide multiple times and had held oxycodone pills in his hands. He talked about being sexually abused as a child. He said he’d been abusive toward his wife. He said his wife had stopped communicating with him and that his family was calling him “psycho.”
That’s the picture. A young man in obvious distress, disclosing the worst moments of his life on livestream after livestream, while the people closest to him sound the alarm.
And here’s how the conservative media covered it:
Riley Gaines compared Ivey to Jesus: “We live in a world that hates Christ and those who believe in Him, but that’s to be expected. Just as He was persecuted, so will we be. Consider me a Jaden Ivey fan.”
Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, declared that “the conduct they are claiming is detrimental is Christianity. They fired Jaden Ivey for being Christian.”
Robby Starbuck posted that “EVERY single NBA player needs to speak up for [Ivey] now or their religious freedom could be next.”
Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to President Trump, said he hoped Ivey sues the Bulls.
Colby Covington went on Tomi Lahren’s OutKick show and called the Bulls “a disgusting organization.”
Ben Shapiro wrote a piece for the Daily Wire headlined “NBA Player Released For Expressing Traditional Christianity.”
Kevin Sorbo replied to the Bulls’ announcement on X: “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Allie Beth Stuckey called it persecution of “basic Christian doctrine.”
The list goes on. Same day. Same framing. Fired for being Christian.
You know what not a single one of them said? “I hope he gets help.”
But his teammates did. Josh Giddey told reporters in San Antonio: “I do really hope he gets help. It’s not going to be with the Bulls anymore, but wherever it is, I hope he gets it.” Coach Billy Donovan said he worried about whether players were getting the resources they needed. Ivey’s own wife posted on Instagram that he “says things for attention” and told followers not to be “deceived.”
The people who actually know Jaden Ivey are worried about him. The people who’ve never met him bought his jersey and booked him on a podcast.
How a complicated story became a simple one
Part of how this became a culture war flashpoint so quickly comes down to how the news broke. The Bulls’ official statement was one sentence: the team “has waived guard Jaden Ivey due to conduct detrimental to the team.” No specifics. But ESPN’s Shams Charania broke it with more detail: “The Chicago Bulls are waiving guard Jaden Ivey after his recent anti-LGBTQ comments amid several rants on religion and other topics.”
That tweet isn’t wrong. But it gave the right the cleanest possible version of the story: man says anti-gay thing, gets fired. That’s a culture war narrative. It’s tidy. It fits on a bumper sticker. The actual story (weeks of escalating behavior, locker room friction, anti-Catholic rants, a player attacking fellow Christians by name, a team that had no contractual reason to keep him around) is messy and human and doesn’t lend itself to fundraising emails.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing a source within the organization, that “it wasn’t just Ivey’s opinions on the LGBTQ issue but an accumulation of posts and comments that started last month.” And the friction started even before the Instagram rants. Back on February 19, Ivey was benched for the first time in his career. Afterward, he told reporters: “I’m not the J.I. I used to be. The old J.I. is dead. I’m alive in Christ no matter what the basketball setting is.” That was over a month before any of the livestreams.
And then there’s the detail that really makes the “persecuted for being Christian” framing fall apart: Ivey wasn’t just criticizing the NBA’s Pride celebrations. He was attacking other Christians. He called Steph Curry, who literally puts Bible verses on his sneakers, a fraud. He called Catholicism a false religion. Billy Donovan, the Bulls’ head coach and a lifelong, devout Catholic who helped build a Catholic high school in Gainesville, had to sit there and process that from a player on his roster. The “fired for being Christian” story only works if you ignore that most of the people Ivey was going after are Christians, too.
The NBA doesn’t have values. It has a spreadsheet.
I grew up a Chicago sports fan. A child of the 90s. The Jordan-era Bulls were the center of my universe, and those teams included Dennis Rodman, who headbutted a referee, kicked a cameraman in the groin, disappeared to Las Vegas in the middle of the Finals, and once got fined $50,000 (the largest fine in NBA history at the time) for telling reporters during the 1997 Finals: “It’s difficult to get in sync because of all the [expletive] Mormons out here. And you can quote me on that.” Phil Jackson, his coach, tried to explain that “to Dennis, a Mormon may just be a nickname for people from Utah,” like Hoosier is for people from Indiana. The Bulls didn’t waive him. They won the championship. Because Dennis Rodman grabbed 15 rebounds a game and the Bulls needed him.
That’s the same organization that just waived Jaden Ivey for “conduct detrimental to the team.”
The difference between Rodman and Ivey isn’t what they said. It’s what they produced. And that principle applies across the entire league.
Jonathan Isaac, a forward for the Orlando Magic, was one of the only NBA players to stand during the national anthem when the entire league knelt in 2020 during the BLM protests in the bubble. He preaches at a church in Orlando. He spoke at Liberty University. He co-wrote a Fox News editorial against vaccine mandates. He published a book called “Why I Stand” with Ben Shapiro’s publishing company. Shapiro called him “an amazing person with an incredible story.” Isaac is one of the most openly conservative, openly Christian players in the NBA. He’s still on the Magic. He’s never been waived. He’s never been disciplined for his beliefs. If the NBA fired people for being Christian, Jonathan Isaac would’ve been gone years ago.
And then there’s what the league tolerates when the player is productive enough. Miles Bridges, a forward for the Charlotte Hornets, pleaded no contest to a felony domestic violence charge after allegedly assaulting the mother of his children in front of them, with injuries allegedly including strangulation, a broken nose, a concussion, and multiple bruises. He was sentenced to three years of probation. He missed one season, served a 10-game suspension, and came back. In July 2024, the Hornets signed him to a three-year, $75 million contract.
Strangulation. Broken nose. Seventy-five million dollars.
Ivey himself actually gets at something real when he talks about Anthony Edwards. In 2022, Edwards posted an Instagram video using a homophobic slur toward a group of men. The NBA fined him $40,000. He deleted it, apologized, and that was that. He wasn’t waived. He wasn’t suspended. The Timberwolves are building their entire franchise around him. On the podcast, Ivey put it bluntly: Edwards wasn’t cut “because he’s the best player on their team, right? They need him, right? He makes them money, right?”
And honestly? Ivey’s right about that. There is a double standard. He’s just wrong about what it is. It’s not Christianity versus the LGBTQ community. It’s stars versus everyone else. Edwards is a franchise player averaging nearly 30 points a game. Ivey was an injured reserve guard on an expiring deal averaging 8.5 for the season. Edwards apologized and moved on. Ivey escalated for days.
The NBA doesn’t cut players for being Christian. It doesn’t cut players for being conservative. It doesn’t even cut players for felony domestic violence, apparently, as long as you can score. It cuts players who aren’t producing and who become a bigger problem than they’re worth. Ivey was hurt, he was out for the year, he had no contract for next season, and he’d become a daily headline for all the wrong reasons. You don’t need a strong moral compass to make that decision. You need a calculator.
They don’t want him to get help. They want him to keep talking.
So the “fired for being Christian” narrative doesn’t hold up. But the people pushing it don’t need it to hold up. They need it to be useful. And for about a week, Jaden Ivey is very useful.
Think about what happened in the 48 hours after he was waived. His teammates said they hoped he’d get help. His wife said he lies for attention. His family called him psycho. And within that same window, an evangelist with a YouTube channel booked him on a podcast, put a microphone in front of him, and let him talk for over an hour. On that podcast, Ivey disclosed that he’d held oxycodone pills in his hands during a suicide attempt. He talked about being sexually abused as a child. He talked about abusing his wife. And the response from the host, and from the conservative media ecosystem that amplified the interview, wasn’t to pause and ask if he was OK. It was to call it courage and keep the cameras rolling.
I’m not diagnosing Jaden Ivey. I don’t know what he’s going through, and I’m not qualified to say. But his former teammates think something is wrong. His former coach thinks something is wrong. His wife thinks something is wrong. His own family thinks something is wrong. And if you watch those livestreams (I watched a couple of them), you don’t come away thinking “this is a man bravely standing up for his convictions.” You come away thinking “someone close to this person needs to take his phone away and sit with him.”
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Ben Shapiro is smart enough to see the difference between Jonathan Isaac writing a book about his faith and Jaden Ivey cycling through daily Instagram Live sessions attacking individual players, disclosing suicide attempts, and telling the world his wife won’t text him back. Those are different things. Shapiro knows that. But “man in crisis needs support” doesn’t generate the engagement that “man fired for being Christian during Holy Week” does. So here we are.
Every “stand strong, king” reply in Ivey’s comments is telling him that the people who love him are wrong. Every “consider me a fan” is reinforcing the idea that he should keep going, keep streaming, keep disclosing, keep escalating. That the problem isn’t what he’s doing. The problem is the world not accepting it. And if you’ve ever watched someone you care about spiral while strangers on the internet cheer them on — and I have been that spiraling person before — you know how dangerous that feedback loop is.
In a week, maybe two, Riley Gaines and Ben Shapiro will have a new cause. Robby Starbuck will be running a new pressure campaign against some company’s DEI policies or something like that. The podcast bookings will dry up. The jersey sales will slow down. And Jaden Ivey will still be a 24-year-old who told the world he almost killed himself, whose wife isn’t speaking to him, whose family says he’s losing his mind, and who spent the worst week of his life surrounded by strangers telling him that everyone who loves him is the enemy.
That’s not defending someone’s faith.
Jaden Ivey sounds like he's about to self-destruct. Never mind. Put a microphone in front of him. Like Ye or Nicki Minaj, conservatives will use Ivey until his star fades or until he says something unpalatable to their benefactors.
The most surprising part this whole thing was that Tomi Lahren still has a talk show.