First modification: 11/03/2021 – 17:46
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New York (AFP)
Meyers Leonard, substitute center for the NBA’s Miami Heat, was fined $ 50,000 on Thursday and removed from the team for a week for uttering an anti-Semitic insult during a video game broadcast live on the Internet.
In a statement, the basketball league said Leonard was “suspended from all Heat facilities and activities for a week for an anti-Semitic comment made on Monday.”
The 29-year-old player “must also participate in a cultural diversity program,” the text said.
“Meyers Leonard’s comment was inexcusable and hurtful and such an offensive term has no place in the NBA or in our society,” League Commissioner Adam Silver said in the statement.
“We have communicated to Meyers that derogatory comments like this will not be tolerated and that he is expected to uphold our league’s core values - equality, tolerance, inclusion and respect – at all times going forward,” the commissioner said.
At the beginning of the week a video was broadcast on social networks in which Leonard is heard uttering the insult while participating in a game of the war video game ‘Call of Duty’, broadcast live on the Twitch platform.
The Miami Heat on Tuesday put the player aside indefinitely while the NBA conducted its investigation.
The center, who has not played since January due to a shoulder injury that will keep him out for the rest of the season, apologized for his comment.
On Wednesday, Meyers “spoke with representatives of the Anti-Defamation League to better understand the impact of his words and we accept that he is truly sorry,” said Commissioner Silver.
Last year, the center was one of the few players who did not kneel during the American anthem in the last playoffs played at Disney World (Orlando, Florida), a gesture that the NBA community adopted in protest against racism and police brutality against black people.
Last November, the Heat extended Leonard’s contract for two years in exchange for $ 19.5 million but have an option to terminate it at the end of the first season.
© 2021 AFP
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