NBA Player THROWN OFF Team For Christian Beliefs, Woke IS NOT Dead
Tate Brown and Daniel Hayworth analyze the Chicago Bulls waiving guard Jaden Ivey for criticizing Pride Night, arguing the move reflects anti-Christian bias rather than conduct issues. They contrast Ivey's release with Miles Bridges' 30-game suspension for domestic violence, citing the Supreme Court's Chiles v. Salazar ruling as proof that woke ideology persists despite legal shifts. The discussion frames this as a spiritual battle where institutional power prioritizes LGBTQ+ values over religious expression, urging pastors to boldly present scripture without fear of persecution while highlighting global Christian suffering in nations like Syria and Nigeria. [Automatically generated summary]
This is Tate Brown here, holding it down on this beautiful Tuesday.
I love slapping this.
This is the most slappable desk in America, from my calculation.
I'm pleased to be back with you on this beautiful Tuesday.
It's a wonderful, it's a nice, beautiful day out here in the sticks.
We're out here in the boonies.
Speaking of, you can go to boonies.hq.com, whatever the link is, get you a boonies board.
That being said, we have a great show for you today.
Obviously, you saw from the title, things are getting wacky and wild in Chicago.
I don't know what's going on, but they're just tossing players off the team because they're not, you know, a down low brother.
Really bizarre stuff going on in Chicago.
We're going to get into all of that.
It's getting wacky.
It's getting wild.
We have some big stories.
In addition to that, the Supreme Court has ruled a big, big decision, quite frankly.
Gender conversion therapy bans, they actually violate free speech in an eight to one decision.
So bad news for the libs over in Colorado.
Colorado is just probably has like a the worst record in the Supreme Court, I think I've ever seen in my entire life.
Literally like they're the Washington Generals.
If we're going to use basketball terminology, we're going all through the show with the basketball terminology.
Literally the Washington Generals, the Supreme Court looks like the Harlem Globe Charters when it comes to Colorado decision making.
A few other stories that we're going to get to if we have time.
Obviously, you guys probably have seen the discourse on Twitter that I am at the, I am very much involved in involving Myra Flores, former Congresswoman from the state of Texas, the great state of Texas, making a rather controversial statement at CPAC.
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From Yahoo News, Bulls make shocking Jaden Ivey decision after rant and blockbuster trade from Yahoo Sports.
I was doing it yesterday.
I really like to throw it back.
You know, I'm a big advocate of Y2K aesthetics.
I think the 2000s, the aughts were a really powerful, really powerful era.
Me and Libby Emmons, the great Libby Emmons, actually discussed this on IRL last week.
How, for Zoomers, a vintage car is like a 2005 Toyota Corolla.
It's really something a sight to behold.
So that's why we're going to the Yahoo, really turning back the clock because they're, quite frankly, pretty irrelevant.
I love when, you know, being in media, because I never intend on working for Yahoo in my entire life.
You can just slam them and nothing happens, dude.
It's a really beautiful thing.
And then they didn't even write this story.
I don't know what it is with Yahoo.
They do this thing where they just have another outlet's story and then they put it on their website.
I don't even know how that works.
Like who's benefiting from this?
That being said, this is the story.
Obviously, Bulls making this shocking decision.
This decision was, let's see if I have it in the stack here.
This is from the Chicago Bulls' Twitter account.
The Chicago Bulls announced today that the team has waived guard Jaden Ivey due to conduct detrimental to the team.
We'll read what Yahoo Sports has to say.
Jaden Ivey played four games for the Chicago Bulls after he was acquired in a blockbuster three-team trade involving the Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks.
Then he went off the rails in a live video streamed on his Instagram account condemning his new team for staging, quote, Pride Night on January 10th, a gesture of goodwill towards the LGBT community, endorsed by most professional sports teams in 2026.
Yeah, it's a gesture of goodwill, not like a woke sacrament, which I think would be a bit more of an accurate assessment of what's going on there.
According to Shams Chernarnia of ESPN, we love Sham.
If you're a basketball, I like basketball.
All right, I'll come out.
I'll say it.
I'm not afraid anymore.
You can cancel me.
You can send, you know, Matrix can send their agents.
I like basketball.
You know, I'm a big basketball fan.
I come from a basketball family.
Obviously, I don't want to dox, but I have people in my family that are pretty involved in the basketball world and the NBA, college basketball.
So I understand this world like the back of my hand.
I just don't talk about it on media.
There's really no point in doing so.
I'm not a Bulls fan.
I'm a diehard.
Rarely die hard.
It's a bit of a stretch.
But I've been a Memphis Grizzlies fan my entire life.
I love the Grizzlies.
Mark Gasol was my favorite player growing up.
So I'm very familiar with the NBA in addition to college basketball.
That's kind of like a thing that fellas do.
If you're like a normal guy, because I think the media space is just flooded with like autists, which is good.
I love autists, but I don't have autism.
I don't have any degree of neurodivergence.
I'm just kind of like a weird guy inherently.
But I love basketball.
And one of my favorite things to do with the fellas, with the squad, is you're watching the NBA, but you're not actually focused on the game.
You're just rattling off players and you're saying, which college did he go to?
Who are they to say to me, man, this man is crazy?
The NBA also proclaims its support for Pride Month Online.
It claims to be the first major sports league to establish an employee research resource team for the LGBTQ Plus employees known as NBA Pride.
Now, obviously, if you know anything about, you know, okay, let's cut to the chase here.
The NBA, obviously, dominated by black players.
I think it's like 80% black as a league.
If you know anything about black people, you know, they do have a higher, I think they, among all ethnicities in the United States, they have the highest proportion of LGBT people.
I think it's like 5%, 6% of black people are like gay, trans, whatever.
But, you know, when it comes to like locker rooms, basketball, it's a very, it's an environment that there's constant pressure to not be gay.
You know, there's always this looming fear of doing something that would be perceived as homosexual.
And I've always admired that, actually, about black people is that they kind of have this fear of, you know, is that acceptable as a man?
You know, is it acceptable for a man to eat a hot dog?
Is it acceptable for a man to, you know, to use sort of a bonics here to throat a glizzy?
You know, that is a conversation that is constantly being, you know, a debate that is raging across barbershops nationwide.
And I really love that about black Americans because that is a conversation that should be had.
And I think white Americans often feign from those sorts of conversations, those tough conversations, you know, the talk.
You know, is it acceptable for a grown man to, again, throat a glizzy as in to eat a hot dog?
Certainly is it acceptable in the presence of other men to eat a hot dog?
When you really think about it, they're kind of at the at the cutting edge of philosophy, of modern 21st century philosophy.
Because, you know, white people, they're talking about like, oh, you know, Straussian, you know, Straussian, you know, philosophy and, you know, economics.
It's like, who cares?
Quite frankly, who cares?
What we really need to know, is it gay to eat gummy worms?
It's a very valid conversation, quite frankly.
And I'm very thankful that they're having these conversations.
All this to be said, the NBA locker room is a place where they're certainly skeptical of sort of the LGBT community broadly.
And I think rightfully so, because if you know anything about a locker room, I've spent my fair share of time in locker rooms as a player.
You know, there are moments where you are indecent, right?
You are unclothed.
And you do not want in your presence when you are unclothed someone to find you attractive that is a male.
That would be a very bad situation to be in if you are in a locker room.
And so that is why there has always been this sort of, I guess, borderline hostility towards anyone that could be perceived as expressing homosexual tendencies because the last thing you want to happen to you before a big game is a rogue hand.
That would just really take your head out of the game.
You saw like in the NFL, for example, another sport, another league that is dominated by black Americans.
When Michael Sam came on and a lot of players were like freaked out, can you blame him?
I mean, can you blame him, really?
I mean, you're, you know, hopping out the, you know, you're hopping out the ice bath and then you got him staring you down, licking his lips.
We don't want that.
What is this?
Prison?
I'm good.
We'll pass.
So mad respect for, again, black Americans and professional athletes, because this is, you see article after article where they are, whenever there is like a gay athlete or something, there's a lot of concern.
Again, the rogue hands.
We want to avoid that.
That is very bad news.
It's already 12.15 and I'm just cooking along here.
So Jaden Ivey comes out, who is a Christian.
Jaden Ivey is a Christian.
He's a born-again Christian, an evangelical.
And he says in this statement here, let's see if I can find it.
He basically comes out here and as the Yahoo Sports article highlighted, he is quite critical of the Bulls' sort of Pride Month celebrations, festivities.
And I think these are all very, A, very sensible takes.
B, these are takes that pretty much every person is saying, is having, is thinking, and it's just no one really wants to say it out loud.
So what Jaden Ivey is really getting at here, obviously, he's not, you know, he's not a public speaker.
He's an NBA player.
And we've had this conversation at length whenever professional athletes do speak out about social matters, social political matters, et cetera, is maybe these guys would be best served just focusing on sports, focusing on their craft, and sort of leaving the political commentary to the commentariat.
But to Jaden Ivey's defense here, one, I agree with everything he's saying.
It's absolutely ridiculous that, again, expressions, overt expressions of Christianity typically receive quite a bit of pushback from these professional sports teams because they are just, these aren't really even teams.
These are, you know, conglomerates.
They're enterprises.
And it's bad for business.
It's bad for business because, again, there's so many incentive structures in the United States that bend towards LGBT, pride, et cetera, that anything that runs counter to that is bad for business.
You know, we may think it's good for business as conservatives.
We say, well, you know, if you just sort of speak what everyone is thinking, then, you know, you're going to get some more support.
That's just not the way it works in business because there's, again, there's so many, I mean, look at this.
Look, back in this article.
I mean, the NBA has literal organizations.
They have employee resource teams for LGBTQ plus employees.
Do they have that for Christians?
Probably not.
I would doubt it.
They might have a chaplain, and that chaplain is probably heavily vetted.
They're not going to let someone that's actually like a biblically sound, you know, pastor into these locker rooms.
At least as far as I know, that's not the case.
So to Jaden Ivey's defense, you know, all he's doing is he's doing the same thing that many other NBA players do all the time and coaches.
I mean, Steve Kerr comes to mind where they're outspoken on politics, on political matters.
They're constantly giving their two cents.
So, you know, all he's really doing is just sort of doing what everyone else is doing, which is they're expressing their thoughts and views on the culture, you know, on the culture broadly.
And again, in a perfect situation, we don't hear anything from NBA players, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
But what he's getting at, and I think is perfectly valid, is he's not even firing the first shot.
He is just responding.
That's all he's doing here.
He's responding to, again, political activism that is being conducted, in this case, by his franchise, by the Chicago Bulls, where the Chicago Bulls are having this Pride Night, which is an overt political action.
You know, we can, liberals will be intentionally obtuse and say, well, no, this is just celebrating, you know, a community.
It's a political action.
It's a political action.
They're doing this because they want to progress policy that would, again, sort of make it more, make the LGBT community, LGBT resources more accessible to Americans and to the youth, really.
Because, I mean, when you think about professional sports, the primary, you know, they're primarily appealing to young people, fundamentally, especially basketball.
Basketball is a very young audience.
So Jaden Ivey is just one of pretty much probably half the NBA at this point that is outspoken on politics.
But because his political opinions are not in line with sort of conventional political commentary that you would see from the vast majority of professional sports, he gets thrown off the team.
He gets thrown off the team.
So we're going to keep reading here.
I need to get a new AA for this.
I struggle with this mouse every time.
It's a bit of a battle.
We'll keep reading here.
We want everyone to know that they have a safe space in sports and for our fans to know that they are welcome here.
Bonnie Thurston, the director of player programs at the WMBA and co-chair of NBA Pride.
Well, that makes sense because the WNBA is like almost all lesbians.
So it's kind of like, you know, the same, fundamentally the same role here.
He told the league's website in 2024.
What about a safe space for Christians?
I mean, Jaden Ivey, what he's expressing here is the common sentiment of Christians.
He's not a like rogue bigot who just has an axe to grind with gay people or whatever.
This is the common sentiment among Christians in the United States and really globally.
Again, because it's very clear in the New Testament specifically that homosexuality is a sin.
And Jaden Ivey primarily is trying to, again, promote Christian values.
He's saying, look, Christianity, I've had this conversion.
I've had this sort of awakening in my life.
And Christianity has provided immense value to me as a man.
I think the public would be best served if they also became Christians.
That's what he's saying.
Therefore, homosexuality, you can't really square that.
You can't be an open homosexual and celebrate homosexuality and be a Christian.
You can be a Christian and struggle with homosexuality.
I mean, that's a sin.
It's not a violation of Christianity to be someone that struggles with a sin and to be a Christian, but you certainly don't celebrate it and you certainly don't double down.
That's just not how this works.
So that's all Jaden Ivey's really getting at here.
And for that, he was thrown off the team.
You know, he was averaging, we'll see here.
Ivy's rant isn't specific to the Bulls.
It's a stance in theory.
It could make him difficult for any NBA team to employ him after making his anti-LGBTQ views known.
Ivy was averaging 8.2 points in 16.8 minutes.
That's actually a pretty good points per game average considering the minutes.
I'd be curious what his 30-minute average is.
For the Detroit Pistons, what he was sent to Chicago in a deal that sent Kevin Herder and Dario Sarich to the Pistons and also sent Mike Conley to Chicago.
The fifth overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft.
The fifth overall pick.
This is a good player out of Purdue.
Ivy has averaged 14.8 points, 3.5 rebounds, and four assists over four NBA seasons.
This is a very common strategy to see James Tallarico.
Again, Jaden Ivey, I won't play the full video here, but he's critiquing Stephan Curry.
You know, Stephan Curry is doing the same thing that Emmanuel H.O. does, or Acho, however you say his name.
The same thing, where, again, he's sort of forwarding anti-Christian principles, anti-Christian values, but couching it in Christian terms, again, to undercut Christianity.
Whether he's intentionally do that or unintentionally doing it, that is the reality that I think Emmanuel, Steph Curry, might be a little bit different.
But that is sort of the natural conclusion of what happens.
Again, if you promote homosexuality, that's going to make it more difficult for someone to follow Christ.
And so that's what you're trying to do.
Again, Jason Ivey seems to be very simple here.
Sean Davis put out a great piece of commentary here.
The conduct they are claiming is detrimental is Christianity.
They fired Jaden Ivey for being Christian.
It's worth noting that the Bulls didn't fire Ronnie Brewer after he was arrested for DUI or Joe Kim Noah after he was arrested for drugs.
Jameson Curry was arrested for public urination and then resisted arrest.
The Bulls suspended him for one game, but also refused to fire him for his conduct.
Christianity is apparently where the Chicago Bulls draw the line.
Swaggy P, for what it's worth, has come out and provided a potential solution for Jaden Ivey of potentially how he could escape this PR nightmare that he is in.
Swaggy P, Nick Young, player used to play for the Lakers, says Jaden Ivey can save himself from all this backlash if he just comes out as a gay person.
Your best bet is just be gay.
And obviously this is like satirical, but there's some truth to that.
Again, if he were just to come out and be gay, this would all get swept under the rug.
Or if I think Ann Culture had made the point, maybe he should just like beat his wife.
You know, I mean, seriously, because that apparently, like, again, you look at all these players in the NBA, they're embroiled in scandal.
They're wailing on their wives.
They're robbing places, etc.
They get a couple game suspensions, a slap on the wrist, maybe fine, 20K.
But the line is Christianity.
If you express Christian values, if you express a Christian view on sexuality, you're done.
Jaden Ivey is probably going to have to go play elsewhere in the world, probably Europe or something like that.
Wacky and wild stuff.
With that, we're going to get to the story and then we'll keep hitting on this NBA story.
We'll bring in Daniel Hayworth, and that'll be an excellent to bring him in and discuss all of this and so much more.
Supreme Court has weighed in on this Chiles versus Salazar case.
I'll just read here from Scotus blog.
The court's first and only opinion for the day is on Chiles versus Salazar on whether a Colorado law banning conversion therapy violates free speech.
The opinion is from Justice Gorsuch and the vote is 8-1 with Justice Jackson dissenting.
Again, Colorado had passed this law that was banning conversion therapy.
The whole contention is if someone, if someone that is a homosexual wants to pursue this, if they don't want to, again, have this, because it's obviously like makes your life harder.
I don't think there's any question about that.
Why would they not have the right to pursue a conversion therapy if they want to pursue that?
I mean, it's ridiculous.
And the Supreme Court, obviously, just weighing in here.
You know, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor, this is from CBS News, of a Colorado counselor who challenged a state law that bans conversion therapy for minors, ruling that lower courts failed to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny in the case.
The high court ruled 8-1 that Colorado law, when applied to talk therapy provided by counselor Kaylee Chiles, regulates speech based on viewpoint.
Of course, Katanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter.
I think this is a really funny commentary here from Jarvis.
Colorado is something like zero for its last 30 in the Supreme Court.
There should probably be a separate Supreme Court that exists solely to strike down Colorado laws.
Justice Jackson, Democrat from Blue Sky, with another barn burner dissent.
Go read her dissent.
It's just like literally makes no sense.
But all this to be said, Katanji Brown Jackson is the future of the Democrat Party and of Democrat thinking, left-wing philosophy.
Again, woke is not dead.
Woke is not dead by any stretch.
Jaden Ivey just got thrown off an NBA team.
Again, NBA is like the third most popular sports league in the United States.
It's increasingly popular overseas.
You know, this is in many ways a way that the United States exercises soft power over the world is through the NBA.
If you go to China, all these kids there are going to be wearing NBA jerseys.
They're going to be tuning in at NBA games.
It's a very, very, very popular sport globally.
And it is how many people around the world interact with the United States, many young people.
This is their perception of the United States comes through the NBA.
For better or for worse, that's the reality of the situation.
The NBA is a very, very woke organization, as you can see by this decision to fire Jaden Ivey from his NBA team.
Woke is not dead.
That was a completely premature statement because, again, we notched a few political victories.
Again, we notched a victory here.
We notch a victory with the Supreme Court.
Again, these are big things.
But the fact that this even had to go to the Supreme Court just shows you that woke is not dead.
The fact that the Supreme Court, in many ways, is sort of a bulwark against wokeness is a disaster.
Wokeness is extremely pertinent in the culture.
People still, it's very, it's not in vogue whatsoever to be opposed to gay marriage.
And this is something 15 years ago that was the take of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, 2008 primary.
They both said, I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
Some of them going as far to say that, you know, it would be an abomination to pass gay marriage.
Joe Biden spoke with fire in like 2006 in the Defense of Marriage Act.
Again, because they understood that the vast majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage because they foresaw that if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.
If you give them gay marriage, in the eyes of the state, as soon as gay marriage becomes the law of the land, in the eyes of the state, gender and sex are now interchangeable.
So a marriage, previously a man and a woman, now you can trade out a man for a woman, a man and a man, and it is still a marriage because in the eyes of the state, now men and women are the same thing, fundamentally.
There's zero difference between the two.
So when you implement gay marriage, you're going to get transgenderism.
You cannot separate the two.
This is why it's foolish when conservatives sort of trot out this talking point of like, oh, we'll do the LGB, but not the T. You know, the T's are making it really difficult for the LGBs.
And if it weren't for the T's, you know, then maybe everyone wouldn't perceive the gay movement broadly as something crazy.
Well, why does that happen?
Because you don't get the LGB without the T, because LGB is promoting, it's pushing.
It's again, it's pushing this idea that men and women are interchangeable.
They're just the only difference between the two is genitalia, and that's it.
That's the only difference.
There's no like metaphysical difference between the two.
There's no spiritual difference between the two.
There's no mental differences between the two.
They're just the same thing, and you can just swap them out.
So you can't actually separate the T from the LGBT.
It's just not how it works.
And again, if you disagree with that, then how is it that every single time the gays, you know, notch a political victory, 10 years later, we're having to beg them to stop transitioning kids.
Do you really honestly think that if we ratcheted back the clock to 2010 that we would get any different outcome?
Do you really think 10 years ago we could just freeze the gay movement, the LGBT movement, at gay marriage, that we wouldn't get the same outcome every single time?
No, because political philosophy always comes to its conclusion.
It will always continue along the same track until it reaches its conclusion.
Homosexuality and its natural conclusion is interchangeable men and women every single time.
It's baked in.
You can't separate the T from the LGB.
The vast majority of gay people understand this.
That's why they view transgenders as people in the same fight as them.
It is not a controversial thing.
It's very obvious what's going on here.
So with that, we're going to bring in our guest for today, the great Daniel.
Hey, I'm very excited to have a conversation with him.
Let me see if I can get this fired up.
We're going to get him in here and we're going to have a conversation with him specifically about Jaden Ivey, but then on all things LGB, let's see if he is in here.
Well, I mean, this is kind of what I want to bring you on because I have this larger narrative.
It's very obvious to me that woke isn't dead.
And, you know, people proclaim this because we are notching political victories.
It's like the Trump administration, especially within the first 90 days, had really notched some serious policy wins.
Therefore, people were declaring woke is dead.
You know, people were coming out and they're saying, look, we got this pass, this pass, this pass, therefore, woke is dead.
But at the undercurrent, the cultural level, I don't think the left really changed anything.
You know, you saw a couple op-eds saying maybe we need to change our view on transgenderism and that sort of thing.
But when you looked at like how these businesses were operating in the private sector, none of the incentive structures ever changed.
I mean, we saw the Jacob Savage piece where he came out and laid out all the different ways where DEI was still being implemented in the private sector, the anti-white discrimination.
But on the LGBT thing, it didn't go anywhere.
There was no actual, not any like real drastic changes in the way that the incentive structures were set up.
The Jaden Ivy really is more of a reminder, to your point.
Yeah, so my take is that you look at all of the different things that you just laid out, and you're completely right that the underlying ideology of the left has not shifted.
The messaging of the left has shifted to the moderate only in order to gain power.
This is sort of what I think a lot of us are now calling the Abigail Spanberger model, which was they really, she ran as a moderate there in Virginia.
And then the moment she gets into office, what is she?
She's out there.
Let's trans all the kids we can.
Let's push all the LGBT stuff in the schools we can.
Let's throw anybody in the right in prison that we can.
Let's do everything that we can in order to be as far left as possible.
But they ran on a moderate message.
And so I think that you're right.
The incentive structure for them hasn't changed because we haven't won on the policy level enough yet.
Although I think today's Supreme Court ruling will help a little bit, but those are just notches on the belt.
Like you said, you have to keep driving.
You have to keep winning.
If you don't keep your foot on the gas, then they're going to come back because you're right.
Their ideology has not changed at all.
So while their messaging has shifted, the reason I was a little bit upset to see that the NBA did this so publicly was that it wasn't like Jaden Ivey had done anything massively even anti-LGBT.
And so it tells me that the NBA has not had any sense of awakening at all about the fact that the country is much more to the right than, and their fan base is much more to the right than what the left has tried to make them into for the past decade and a half.
Now, what I will say is that I really enjoyed watching all of the other NBA and NFL stars who have already come out in support of Jaden Ivey, basically saying, hey, we're on your team because this isn't just you getting tossed because you did something crazy.
It wasn't that at all.
It really had to do with the fact that he was just saying, I'm a Christian.
This is what I believe.
I think that what we're doing here is wrong.
This is a basic fundamental Christian belief.
And the NBA put their throats on his neck, their boot on his neck, sorry.
And they just said, hey, we're squashing this right now because you can't have those kinds of beliefs in the NBA.
You can't be an NBA star and be an outspoken Christian because your religion contradicts our religion because we still follow the woke religion.
Well, and that's a great point where the NBA is really trying to nip this in the bud because I think what's in the back of the head, in the back of the heads of a lot of these shot callers in the NBA is what happened in the NHL, where the NHL had these pride nights and they make them wear the gay jerseys or whatever.
With a formerly Republican governor of Tennessee, which is hilarious.
But what you saw in the NHL was, you know, it started with a lot of these like Eastern European players who were like, you know, like devout Orthodox Christians who, you know, were really like weirded out by these sort of Western principles where we just idolize gay people.
But then it really spread where a lot of Christian NHL players, you know, Americans and Canadians, were just confident expressing their Christian values and saying, no.
So it's like the NHL have this kind of containment breach where a few players stuck their neck out.
And now it's quite common, actually, for NHL players to not participate in the Pride Night festivities, for lack of a better word, where the NBA, I think, is kind of fearing that situation where if Jaden Ivey, you know, sticks his neck out, then a lot more players who feel the same way will be a little bit more confident, you know, standing up to this absurdness.
And so that's a great point you made, where I think this is more about kind of sending a message.
This is a shot across the bow, and they're just saying, hey, I bet, let's be honest here.
If you know anything about black Americans, they're not down with a lot of this Pride night stuff.
So, you know, if Jaden Ivey is able to get away with this and their view, then you're going to see a lot more players come out and say, yeah, this is ridiculous.
Well, the truth is they know that if they let one guy through the breach, like you said, then they'll have to let a lot more.
And I think honestly, what it came down to is they knew they had to be swift.
It had to be decisive and it had to be no sense of recourse for him.
I would bet that the league put pressure on the Bulls to do this.
I would bet almost anything that the league stepped in and put pressure on him.
Technically, it's the Bulls doing it, but I can't see that the league didn't have their hand involved.
Now, I think that the reason that they're able to do this with Jaden Ivey is he's a good player, but he's been hurt the last year, two years, really, two seasons.
He's had a bit of a struggle with some injuries.
And so he hasn't been playing at the top of his game.
And I think what they want to avoid is they want to avoid somebody who's really a star coming out and professing their Christian faith that they can't just get rid of.
And so they're trying to send a message to the rest of the league: hey, if you're below that true stardom level, you don't even have a shot.
What I would say is if anybody who is a star in the NFL sees this clip or any others like it, here's what I would just say: it's your Christian duty, in fact, to stand up for your brother who's getting persecuted.
He just lost his job.
He just lost his career.
He just lost everything he's built his entire life for because of his Christian faith.
Go give that guy some cover.
Like other players need to stand up and they need to start saying, Hey, we're not just going to sit back and let this happen to somebody who's professing the same faith that I hold.
I'm going to be bold.
I'm going to stand up.
We're not going to go quietly into that.
And by the way, everything that he says, I agree with.
So are you going to fire me now?
I mean, once you have real stars that start taking those stances, that's when the league itself can change.
I think that right now the league is trying to say, you don't, don't tempt us.
But I think the truth is that the league is hurting.
The NBA is hurting in viewership.
It's still hurting in attendance.
And so I think that if you have some real stars who are Christians who are willing to come out and say, hey, that's wrong.
And by the way, everything he said, let you hear it from my mouth too.
I think that the league is going to have to deal with that.
And I think that other sports leagues should have the same type of thing happening.
We had a little bit of that in the NHL.
We had a little bit less of it, but we still had some in the MLB.
The NFL did a decent job ditching some of the woke stuff, but now it's coming right back.
We saw that again this season.
And those guys who really did a good job standing up with the first go-round of that need to take another stand.
Anti-Christian bias has no place in American sports.
American sports are American, and America is explicitly founded on Christian ideals.
And so anti-Christian bias can't exist in those sports and us still be celebrating the things that sports are supposed to celebrate.
I mean, and to the first to your point, I mean, think about, we go back to obviously a completely different political issue here, but the Kyrie Irving situation, you know, in 2020, 2021, where, you know, he started speaking about the vaccine.
And obviously, he went on a few other tangents.
But considering he's box office, like Kyrie Irving single-handedly gets people through the turnstiles, they were terrified to really bring the hammer down on him because it would hurt their sales.
Jaden Ivey, not really, he's a good player.
He's not box office.
You know, I said any, he's not a star, but he's not a scrub.
Like any team would be happy to have him on the team, but he's not like putting people in seats unless he's maybe in Indiana or something like that, you know, all the Purdue fans.
But they, like you said, to your point, they can kind of, you know, make an example of Jaden Ivey because again, it's not really going to hurt their bottom line, which is, that's part of the reason what's so terrifying about wokeness is they do actually get away with this, quite frankly.
And we even saw like around the Colin Kaepernick thing where Nike's sales actually went up.
So in certain instances, it actually like benefits them, which is an absolutely petrifying thing.
People need to remember, half the country voted for Kamala Harris.
Slightly less than half of the country voted for Kamala Harris.
So it's like, we're not, this whole idea of the silent majority, that's actually kind of a poisonous idea because it gives you this false sense of security.
Like, well, the NBA is really going to learn their lesson for doing this.
It's like, they actually probably won't, unless, to your point, you get a lot of these players come out and be bold because there's actually, you said it, there's no recourse for Jaden Ivey.
That's at Will Employment.
You got canned.
You'll probably be in the Euro League in a year.
There's nothing he can really do about it unless all these other players come out.
And then, yeah, I mean, there's so many different factors here.
To your second point, I mean, not just is this anti-Christian, but he didn't even express anything that could even be potentially couched as hateful.
Like he just said, he was more criticizing Pride Night more so than emphasizing the Christian view of sexuality.
Yeah, especially because like, you know, not to get too crass here, but like the majority of locker rooms, I don't think would be too thrilled about a gay player entering.
I mean, we see this.
We saw headlines after the Jason Collins thing after the Michael Sam thing, where a lot of players in these locker rooms were like kind of uncomfortable with someone entering the locker room that would be attracted to them while they're stripping down.
Well, and here's something else that I want to point out.
Miles Bridges was suspended for beating his ex-wife for 30 games.
He beat his ex-wife.
He got convicted and he spent 30 games suspended from the league.
I don't understand how that is not as big of a deal to the NBA as somebody coming out and saying, hey, my Christian faith tells me that this is wrong and they cut him for it.
It's because they're completely shutting down any sense of opposition to their held beliefs.
They understand that they come in contradiction.
And so they can't let any of that happen.
And it doesn't matter the actual morality of the situation.
They don't care about that.
All they care about is that they could have a player who's messaging against what they've chosen to be their sacred cow.
And when you look at it, you think anybody can look at it.
Any of these players who've been suspended for several games, Miles Bridges or any of the other dozens of players who've had some kind of domestic abuse case and the league gives them a slap on the wrist or some amount of suspension.
We look at that as everyday people and we think that's way worse.
That's absolutely worse than him just saying, hey, I think that this is wrong and I don't want to be a part of celebrating it.
I don't know how you can coerce Jay Nive into celebrating something that his religion explicitly tells him he can't, but you're going to give a slap on the wrist to guys who go home and they beat their family.
Oh, I mean, well, it just gets at like the broader problem with leftism is that, again, the one strict line of the sand for them is issues pertaining to sexuality.
I mean, again, it's demonstrated over and over again where you see it.
I mean, to your point, we're like, okay, players are wailing on their wives and get away with it.
So it's like, you know, all the ire is reserved for people that are really not the perpetrators of the issues that are afflicting women or afflicting, you know, whatever.
It's the kind of the same thing.
It's like the fine line from the thing that really turns them out is issues pertaining to sexuality.
The other issue, the things that affect their power base, like immigration.
But when it comes to like social issues, that's the line.
You can beat your wife, you can, you know, embezzle money, do whatever.
You'll be back and sit out a few weeks, think about what you did, and then come back.
But again, broadly critical of homosexuality, you're done.
And it really just kind of illustrates why this is such a pernicious ideology.
Because again, the incentive, the punishments, the different punishments are completely unbalanced.
And again, not that there shouldn't even be a punishment for being against homosexuality broadly.
And this is actually where I have an act to grant conservatives because this is in many ways conservatives' fault because they completely abandoned the line, you know, the front line on the LGBT issues.
Where as soon as O'Burgh or Bergerfell, the decision comes down, gay marriage is now the law of the land, pretty much every Republican backed away from the gay marriage thing.
Obama ran in 2008 on marriage being between a man and a woman.
And we've completely abandoned the line, like you're saying.
You know, I just think about, you know, I'm a pastor, and one of the things that I try to encourage our people to look at the world, the lens I try to encourage them to look at the world through, is that there's a world that you can't see that's spiritual.
And a lot of the things that happen in our common culture only start to make sense once you view them through a spiritual lens.
When you start to understand that there's a Holy Spirit in this world that you can have by putting your faith in Jesus Christ and being made new in him and finding a new life, that helps you get into a view of the world that starts to light things up.
You know, C.S. Lewis says that Jesus is like the light.
You see him, but also by him, you see everything else.
And so once you come to faith in Christ, what you start to see is that a lot of these things that the incentive structures are built one way.
And you think, why would anybody in their right mind do that?
Things like the woke incentive structures that they built into what were traditionally conservative things like sports.
You know, how did we get to this place?
And you start to ask these questions.
And the answer, I think, really is that there's a spiritual realm that you and I don't see, but that we all interact with every single day, that we're not just flesh and blood, but that we're body, soul, and spirit.
And that there's powers of this darkness.
That's what the Apostle Paul tells us.
He says our battle is not against flesh and blood.
It's against the rulers, against the principalities, against the authorities of this present darkness, the spiritual forces of this dark world.
That's what we're fighting up against.
And all of these things, the woke ideology that the right has been pushing back on for the last 15 years, 30 years, when we've really been dealing with the woke ideology, that's just the fruition of the spiritual movement that has happened in nations all across the course of human history that have fallen into sexual degeneracy, that have fallen into this mammon worship, right?
The worship of the stuff that we have.
All of these different issues in our culture, you start to view them through the lens of what God has to say about them.
And they all start to make sense.
And you think maybe this book that people have told me is ridiculous, this 2,000-year-old, 4,000-year-old book that people call the Bible isn't so ludicrous after all.
Maybe it has something to say that applies not only to the world around me, but to my everyday life.
And that's what I would encourage people to look at: if you look at stuff like this and you think of it as spiritual, it is not a coincidence that it is holy week.
And that at the same time, in America, we're seeing this American version of persecution play out with Jaden Ivey, where the woke mind virus, this spiritual force, this dark spiritual force comes after this guy in public fashion to try and scare Christians.
That's not a coincidence.
At the same time that we have that happening, we also have Christians being slaughtered in Syria and in Nigeria.
I mean, because Jaden Ivey, he was just saying, hey, I had this radical conversion.
I am now a Christian.
The old, he said, the old JI, the old Jaden Ivey is dead.
I've had this massive, I've seen the massive change in my life.
And so I am imploring you to explore Christianity because it's provided so much value to my life.
And some of these things that are being pushed by the NBA, by my employer, again, run counter to that.
So of course he's going to be critical of that.
He is trying to help people.
He is trying to say, this helped me.
That's like someone promoting a diet that's helped them extensively.
And then if their employee, like think about this, like Cristiano Ronaldo, you know, he talks about, you know, he has this extensive health regimen.
And then they put a Coca-Cola in front of him when he was, you know, giving a press conference.
And he moved the Cokeball out of the way because he's saying, if you drink this, you're not going to get this.
You know, this runs counter to what I am trying to communicate to you, that this will help you.
All Jaden Ivey is doing is the same thing.
He's moving the metaphorical Coke bottle out of the way.
He's saying, this right here, if you pursue this, it will destroy you.
If you pursue Christianity, it will help you.
It will benefit you.
It will, again, provide immense value to your life.
And he lost his job as a consequence.
And I think that's a message to not just Christians, but even to pastors.
Because again, I despise this.
You constantly see this in Christianity, specifically in evangelicalism.
This is kind of the world I come from.
Is you'll get a pastor and he'll come up and you'll finally work up the courage to deliver a sermon on homosexuality.
You know, he's got to cover those pesky verses that Paul penned regarding homosexuality.
But before they get into it, they give you this like 15-minute struggle session where, like, well, you know, the one thing I want to start before I say anything else, I just hate the way that Christianity has treated homosexuals over the years, and it really breaks my heart.
So I just want to say, like, this isn't a personal attack.
And I'm like, why?
They never do that with any other sinny.
They never give up.
Never get up and they say, you know, the Christians have been really harsh to wife beaters over the years.
Like, if you're a wife beater in the crowd, I want you to know I don't hate you.
I have no ill will in my heart.
You never see that.
But when it comes to homosexuality, again, you get this like 15-minute preamble about why there's no hate in my heart.
Yeah, we have made a lot of enemies and a lot of friends over the past couple of years.
So I'm the location pastor.
Our church has three locations.
I'm over our central campus.
And one of the things that we've seen as a church is my pastor has been extremely bold and standing up against all of this different woke stuff, against everything in the culture that's detrimental, you're right, to your soul that the Christians have been calling out for 2,000 years that the Bible has been saying are wrong and unhealthy for you.
Like you said, since the creation of the world, God has showed us a good way and a better way.
And what you've seen is a lot of these pastors have done exactly what you said, where they've shied away from and even apologized for the truth because they're afraid of offending people.
And let me just tell you, God's word is offensive.
God's word is you're dead in your trespasses and sins and you're not good enough.
And without the person of Jesus Christ in your life, you cannot be free and you cannot be healed and you cannot be made whole.
That's offensive, but you know what?
It's true.
And I would rather have the truth because the truth raises you to life.
And here's what I would say to the churches and pastors, any pastor listening, if you're too big to get political in your pulpit, you're too small for your ministry.
The truth is that your church needs shepherded through all of the confusing and crazy times that are going on around us.
And our job as pastors, our job as Christians is to be the light of the world.
We're supposed to bring the word of God to people who are hungry for it and shepherd them through.
The world is chaotic and confusing and it's dark and people need the light of God's word.
And if you're going to be God's editor instead of his messenger, what you're going to find very quickly is that you're losing influence in his kingdom and you're losing out on his purpose for your life.
Just so that you can stay safe so that you don't have to deal with any opposition.
I'll just tell you right now, Jesus said in this world, you have, will have trouble.
We're going to have trouble.
We're going to have persecution.
We're going to have to deal with those things.
He also says, take heart, I've overcome the world.
So I would rather go into battle knowing that there's going to be persecution than run from the conflict, hoping that it just won't reach me if I just sit down and shut up enough.
I mean, we've seen a lot of this.
The past five weeks, we've been preaching through a series on Islam and we've gotten a lot of media attention for that.
You can find all of that at vintage.church forward slash infidel.
And what we found is that there's some pastors who are upset at us for being courageous and calling out this rising issue in our country.
And then there's some pastors who are like, this is a breath of fresh air.
And I will say, those who are waking up to it, who are looking around at what we're doing and are saying, hey, we really need to do this.
We've given those resources away to almost 200 different churches in the country already in the past five weeks.
It's going to be double that by the time we get back on in two weeks from now.
And here's what I'll just say.
That's because people are hungry for the truth.
You don't run away from the truth.
You present God's truth.
And what I would say to any pastor who's going to get upset at me for telling that or calling them out is go read God's word and find any of the cowards in the Bible and ask yourself, is that the guy that I want to be like?
Or do I want to be like the guys who stood in the face of giants?
It states this in multiple instances that the shepherds are held to a different standard because the shepherds are responsible for their flock.
So again, if you're, that's a great point you made, if you're sort of editorializing what's coming out of the scripture rather than just presenting it.
Again, if those people are misconstrued, you're going to be held accountable for that as well.
Again, if you're delivering a sort of contorted gospel to these people, you're going to be held accountable for that.
So again, if you're a pastor watching this, you don't just get away from this scot-free.
There is a cosmic ledger.
These things are being accounted for.
Again, every time that you shy away from the truth, anytime that you editorialize because you're afraid of not making, you know, not being seen as, you know, warm and fuzzy in the eyes of like Christianity today or whatever.
Again, that's being logged.
That's being accounted for.
And this isn't to say, you know, like whatever, but there's some truth that you are held responsible for this.
Again, you are a pastor.
There's a different level of responsibility.
This is why I'm sort of, you and me are both communicating to pastors because I think everyone watching this stream right now probably agrees with us, but a lot of people that will see this after the fact, maybe don't.
And I hope this does reach some pastors because again, now is not the time to shy away from these things.
We are in a battle, not just for our civilization, and that's worth standing up for to begin with, but we're in the battle right now.
We're in the midst of a battle for people's souls.
And you're going to be held accountable for that.
Again, we're talking about who sort of comes into communion with Christ and who doesn't.
And there are so many bear traps being set up by the world right now.
And they're getting increasingly clever of these bear traps that they're setting up that many people are stumbling into.
And it is your job as a shepherd to shepherd people away from those bear traps, to keep them within the flock.
And I would just say too, you know, I know we're starting to run out of time here, but this holy week, go to church.
There's absolutely nothing that will change your life like a relation, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Now, personal doesn't mean private.
Your life of faith is lived out, whether you're at home, whether you're at church, whether you're at your job, wherever you are.
The truth is that if you're sitting here and you're listening to this and you're going, my life is messed up.
My life is broken.
You need to go find a faithful, Bible-believing church that's courageous and that's not willing to compromise on God's word.
And what you'll find is that as you begin to walk with the Lord, as you begin to drink in his word, as you begin to surround yourself with the church, the people who are going to follow after him, come what may, the cross before me, the world behind me, no turning back.
As you start to walk with those people, everything in your life will get better.
You ask me a year after doing that for a whole year, if your life is better or worse.
I promise every single person who says I've done this for a year faithfully, your life is going to be so much better.
The truth is that God, the creator and author of all of existence, proclaimed his word and the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
And that is the person of Jesus Christ.
And during Holy Week, what we celebrate is the sacrifice that he made for us on the cross on Good Friday and his resurrection that brings all of us to life.
Because even though we're dead in our sins, we can be made alive in Christ.
And if you embrace that truth, your whole life will change for the better and you'll find an eternal life with Christ.
I mean, there's a lot of sort of political messaging going on and that sort of thing, but we're talking about, again, what is going to improve your life?
Like what metrics-wise, this is what people need to hear.
What is going to improve my life?
Because everyone is struggling right now.
Everyone is suffering.
Again, look at depression rates.
Look at suicide rates.
Everything is sky high, higher than it's ever been.
Meanwhile, we have all of our, you know, we have all our needs met, all our earthly needs.
You know, no one's starving to death in America.
I mean, the obesity rate gets higher the poorer you are.
So again, our physical needs are being met, but our spiritual needs have never been met less.
Like we've never been more starving from a spiritual point of view.