Former Chicago Bulls guard Jaden Ivey says his wife isn’t speaking to him after the team cut him amid fallout from anti-LGBTQ+ comments he made on an Instagram live stream.
“That’s why my wife in here, and she not even texting me,” Ivey, 24, revealed on another Instagram live stream on Tuesday, March 31, “Those who are around me, those who are my family members betraying [me] because of what I spoke. The truth. Betraying me. Saying that I’m losing my mind. Saying that I’m crazy. … Those are my own household. All because of the Gospel. All because I said the truth.”
Ivey, a Purdue University alum, married former Boilermakers volleyball player Caitlyn Newton in 2022 and the pair shares son Noah, 3, daughter Shiloh, 2, and son Isaiah, 13 months.
The former Detroit Pistons draft pick first came under fire on Monday, March 30, when he railed against the NBA for celebrating Pride Month while on a stream.
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“The world can proclaim LGBTQ, right?” he said. “They proclaim Pride Month. And the NBA, they proclaim it. 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 in the streets. Unrighteousness.”
Ivey’s rant came on the heels of a series of live streams in which he appeared erratic and combative with followers in the comments section. He wrote to one fan, ”Catholicism is a false religion. And is not the true Doctrine of Christ. [It] does not lead to salvation in Jesus Christ.”
The Bulls waived Ivey on Monday, citing “conduct detrimental to the team.” Head coach Billy Donovan addressed the situation Monday evening before the team lost to the San Antonio Spurs.
“I think there’s a certain level of standards and expectations that are here,” he said. “I mean, we have people from all different walks of life working in the building and players from all different walks of life, right? So, the first thing is, everybody comes with their own personal experiences. But one is, we’ve got to all be professional. I think there’s got to be a high level of respect for one another, and we got to help each other and then be accountable to those standards.”
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Ivey also appeared on Kerrigan Skelly’s “Pinpoint Podcast” on Tuesday, where he opened up about the mental toll his injuries took on him last season and how it impacted his faith.
“I’ve almost committed suicide multiple times,” he said. “And I’m not ashamed to say it. I’m not ashamed because God was merciful to keep me here. I had [oxycodone] pills in my hand. And my wife was telling me, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t go down this road.’”
He continued, “I get surgery, I’m rehabbing, right? And I’m under this false doctrine of once saved, always saved. That you’re righteous, but it doesn’t matter if you sin, it can’t touch your soul…And so I still had no peace, and I went back and…during that time, I had my two children, and I was back in the world, back in the world again, trying to figure out what, what, what is the truth?”
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