Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving was dropped by sports activities large Nike on Monday after the NBA star sparked a firestorm by posting a hyperlink to an anti-Semitic movie.
“Kyrie Irving is no longer a Nike athlete,” a spokesman for the corporate advised AFP.
The sponsorship deal got here beneath stress final month when the sportswear large suspended its relationship with the Nets’ level guard.
Hours after the suspension was issued, Irving provided an apology on Instagram. But Nike distanced itself from him, saying it could not launch the Kyrie 8 shoe that had been anticipated to debut in November.
Irving had been beneath scrutiny since he wrote a social media publish by which he provided a hyperlink to the movie “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake up Black America” – a 2018 movie broadly condemned for holding a variety of anti-Semitic tropes.
Irving took to Twitter on Monday, replying to a journalist who wrote concerning the Nike rupture with a GIF of the phrases “Let the party begin.”
Hours later, he additionally posted: “Anyone who has even spent their hard earned money on anything I have ever released, I consider you FAMILY and we are forever connected. It’s time to show how powerful we are as a community.”
In the wake of his preliminary publish, Irving was suspended by the Nets, who cited his “failure to disavow anti-Semitism” both on social media or in conferences with reporters.
In an interview, he insisted he was not anti-Semitic.
“I just really want to focus on the hurt that I caused or the impact that I made within the Jewish community, putting some type of threat, or assumed threat, on the Jewish community,” Irving advised SportsNet New York.
“I just want to apologize deeply for all my actions for the time that it has been since the post was first put up.”
