While NBA player Kyrie Irving’s time in Brooklyn is ended, the protracted narrative surrounding his antisemitism incident appears to have not.
In a podcast released on Tuesday, NBA writer Sam Amick noted that Irving had taken down his Instagram post from November in which he apologized for tweeting about an anti-Semitic movie.
The Brooklyn Nets gave Irving a minimum five-game suspension after he refused to retract the tweet and declared, “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I came from.”
As a new player for Dallas Mavericks owner and Jew Mark Cuban, he was questioned about the choice to erase the tweet during a press conference on Tuesday.
I regularly erase things, and I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone in the community, Irving claimed.
Irving ultimately replied “yes” when asked if he still stands by the apology after disclosing new details about his family.
“I maintain the identity for which I apologized. I did it because I love my family, and I have Jewish family members who are very close to me, Irving stated. “Did the media realize that when they referred to me as antisemitic? No. Did they have any knowledge of my family? No. Everything was presumptuous.
I responded rather than expressing myself emotionally responsibly, he continued. I didn’t mean to come out as aggressive or defensive. I stand by my apology and my supporters.
It is unclear whether Irving’s family members are Jewish or whether the claim manifests the Black Hebrew Israelite worldview he espoused in the movie, which asserts that African Americans are the lineal heirs of the ancient Israelites.
Because of Irving’s scandal and Kanye West, the musician better known by his stage name Yeantisemitic ,’s outbursts, attention to this worldview has grown recently.
Black people are genuinely Jews, so I can’t be anti-Semitic, West tweeted in October.
A reporter questioned Irving during his media appearance on Tuesday about if the Jewish members of his family had spoken to him about the movie he had shared and whether his decision to promote it had offended them.
Irving reaffirmed his oft-repeated statement about knowing “where I come from,” and then he ducked.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about world history, he said. “Whatever it held was contained there. I didn’t concur with everything, and I’ve been stating it here.
He criticized the media once more, saying that “some media members genuinely bothered to do study — instead of being the first to publish things” would enable them to understand where he was coming from.
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