Kyrie Irving found himself on the wrong end of the news cycle earlier this NBA season when he was called out for being an antisemite. In reality, Irving has long been obsessed with wanting to figure out his own heritage and in doing so, he posted a screenshot of a movie on Amazon filled with hateful speech.
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The falsities in this documentary were proven to be detrimental to the Jewish community. When faced by the media on 2 separate occasions, Irving failed to apologize for posting the screenshot. This eventually led to both Joe Tsai and Adam Silver condemning his actions.
Irving would be suspended and would also lose out on his contract with Nike in the process. Since then, he has apologized, officially, and has been reinstated back as a Brooklyn Net. While Nets fans can rejoice over this, they certainly can’t about the recent hate crime statistics.
Following the Kyrie Irving controversy, New York records a massive spike in antisemitic hate crimes
Recent statistics released from the New York Police Department have shown that the Jewish community in the state has suffered the most out of any ethnicity in terms of crimes committed against them. According to the stats, there has been a 125% increase on this front.
This increase coincides with the month-long Kyrie Irving controversy and Kanye West’s continued spiral down the antisemitic path as well. Bringing the harm that their words can cause to the forefront has backfired in a way as it has brought quite a lot of negative attention to the Jewish community.
February saw the worst spike of the year in terms of hate crimes against Jews, as 56 of them were reported, as opposed to 45 from November. It was in November that 2 armed individuals planned to attack people of the Jewish faith while wearing Nazi bands on their arms. They were luckily apprehended by the NYPD.
Kyrie Irving is completely done with Nike
After Nike announced they would be halting all production of the Kyrie 8 and would not be releasing it, they put out a statement yesterday which established their severed ties with Kyrie Irving.
Irving took to Twitter to acknowledge the development and thanked all of his fans who spent their money to buy his products over the past decade. Prior to this, he was seen playing an NBA regulation game in Skechers so it’s safe to say he’s ready to move on as well.
