The N.B.A. fined Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards $40,000 on Tuesday for anti-gay remarks that he made in an Instagram video that circulated on-line this month.
Within the video, which has since been deleted from his account, Edwards used homophobic language to explain a gaggle of individuals he was filming as they stood on a sidewalk. Edwards has 1.2 million followers on Instagram.
Edwards, the No. 1 total decide within the 2020 N.B.A. draft, used his Twitter account to apologize on Sept. 11.
“What I mentioned was immature, hurtful and disrespectful, and I’m extremely sorry,” he mentioned in a publish. “It’s unacceptable for me or anybody to make use of that language in such a hurtful approach, there’s no excuse for it, in any respect. I used to be raised higher than that!”
The N.B.A. mentioned in an announcement that Edwards had been fined for utilizing “offensive and derogatory language on social media.”
Coming into his third N.B.A. season, Edwards is likely one of the league’s rising stars. Final season, he averaged 21.3 factors, 4.8 rebounds and three.8 assists per sport whereas serving to lead the Timberwolves to the playoffs for the primary time because the 2017-18 season.
On Sept. 12, Tim Connelly, the Timberwolves’ president of basketball operations, launched an announcement via the group, saying he was “disenchanted” in Edwards’s actions.
“The Timberwolves are dedicated to being an inclusive and welcoming group for all and apologize for the offense this has precipitated to so many,” Connelly mentioned.
The league has usually fined gamers for utilizing profane or homophobic language.
In 2021, for instance, Kevin Durant of the Nets was fined $50,000 for utilizing homophobic and misogynistic language in a personal social media trade with the actor Michael Rapaport, who then publicly shared screenshots of a few of the dialog.
N.B.A. groups usually have Pleasure nights to have a good time the L.G.B.T.Q. group. However Jason Collins, who got here out in 2013, continues to be the one energetic N.B.A. participant to have mentioned that he’s homosexual, feeding the notion that there stays a stigma about homosexuality in males’s skilled sports activities.
Invoice Kennedy, an N.B.A. referee, mentioned that he was homosexual in 2015, not lengthy after guard Rajon Rondo, then with the Sacramento Kings, directed a homosexual slur at him throughout a sport. Rondo was suspended one sport for his conduct.
Six months later, Kennedy represented the N.B.A. on its float on the New York Metropolis Pleasure March. The N.B.A. and the W.N.B.A. have since change into staples of the parade, one of many largest on this planet. Gamers, referees and officers from each leagues have taken half.