Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard was fined $50,000, suspended from the team’s facilities and prohibited from team activities for a week to get the anti-Semitic slur he made while playing video games Monday.
Leonard will also be required to participate in a cultural diversity program.
“Meyers Leonard’s comment was hurtful and such an offensive term has no place in the NBA or in our society,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.
At a video that started circulating on social media Tuesday, Leonard is heard saying:”F–ing cowards; don’t f–ing snipe me, you f–ing k– b–.”
By Tuesday evening, the Heat had declared Leonard would be far from the team indefinitely and the middle issued an apology in Instagram article , writing in a job,”I promise to do better and understand that my future actions will be more powerful than my use of the word.”
“He said something that was really distasteful and hurtful,” Heat trainer Erik Spoelstra said Wednesday. “And we are left with the aftermath of this.”
Silver stated that on Wednesday,” Leonard spoke with the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that was founded to fight anti-Semitism. Leonard’s compulsory cultural diversity program is a multisession course that offers cultural, racial and sensitivity training.
“We take that he’s genuinely remorseful,” Silver continued in a statement. “We have hauled to Meyers that derogatory comments like this won’t be tolerated and he is going to be expected to uphold the core values of our team — equality, tolerance, inclusion and respect — at all times going forward.”
Silver, appearing on ESPN’s Greeny, told host Mike Greenberg that Leonard met voluntarily with the ADL. In addition, he explained the $50,000 fine was the maximum amount he could fine a player for this sort of act.
“I take his word that he didn’t know the import of what he was saying, and he is paying a price for it,” he explained.
The suspension does not include loss of cover for games missed because Leonard is currently injured, sources confirmed to ESPN’s Bobby Marks. He appeared in just three games for the Heat this year and was diagnosed with a season-ending shoulder injury in January. He’ll nevertheless be compensated for the five matches the Heat play throughout his or her suspension. If he had been healthy, Leonard would have confronted sacrificing $324,000.
