CHICAGO — Disaster could not have dominated this season more thoroughly for the Chicago Bulls.

A sub-.400 record, a laundry list of injuries and the departure of half the team’s most beloved players would have been bad enough. But on Monday, the team waived Jaden Ivey — who had spent a total of only 115 minutes on a basketball court in a Bulls jersey — after the guard went on a series of religious rants on his social media, including a bigoted diatribe against the NBA’s practice of hosting LGBTQ+ pride nights.

This whole thing was messy and complicated and confusing from start to finish. It’s hard to define what exactly that means for the future.

As a queer person covering this team, I was surprised by my emotional response to Monday’s news cycle. Ivey’s comments certainly were not the most heinous example of homophobia I’ve heard in my life, but this was the first time I had encountered vocal discrimination in the workplace. It hurt, but not for long.

The Bulls moved more quickly than I ever expected. Ivey made his first comments in the late morning. Barely five hours later, the team publicly announced its decision to waive him for “conduct detrimental to the team.” This sentiment encompassed ownership’s aversion to the totality of his comments, including his indictment of Catholicism and his aggressive condemnation of “sinners” from every walk of life.

In a situation such as this, it’s easy to feel tokenized or isolated as one of the sole members of the aggrieved identity in the room. But never once did I feel the need to advocate for my community or argue the severity of Ivey’s comments. Every Bulls staffer I spoke with reiterated a deep empathy for the issue at hand. Coach Billy Donovan delivered a simple but firm rebuke in his pregame comments. It was a refreshing reassurance of the standards of acceptance and professionalism to which most rational people hold themselves in 2026.

This was a relief. It saved me from expending any additional energy or brainpower on my personal hurt and indignation — and left me free to fully examine the outright stupidity of the decision by executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas to trade for Ivey.

It might not seem as if the Bulls gave up much by waiving an injured player with 13 days left on his contract. Ivey managed to play only four games for the Bulls following his acquisition at the trade deadline before he was sidelined (and ultimately shut down) for a lingering knee injury. In the overall scope of a season, his impact on the team was marginal at best.

But cutting Ivey meant the Bulls had to give up on their biggest swing of the trade deadline. It’s easy to label this deal as “taking a flyer” on a once-talented player who has struggled to recover from a major injury. That’s not how the Bulls front office saw it. The Bulls mostly picked up throwaway, expiring deals at the deadline, but that wasn’t the case with Ivey. Karnišovas acquired Ivey with confidence that the Bulls were buying low on a front-row seat to the restricted free agency of a player who could make an impact on the team for years.

“I think there was hope that he was going to be a guy that would be here long term,” Donovan said. “That was the intention of doing the deal that got done. That was the impression I got from the front office. Obviously it didn’t work out that way, but that was the intention. Now we have to pivot and move on to something else.”

Sure, the Bulls didn’t give up much in return — a player swap for Kevin Huerter, who was unlikely to return after his contract expires this summer. But until this weekend, Karnišovas was ready to invest another long-term contract on a still-hobbled player with glaring character concerns.

The fallout has been accompanied by a common refrain from NBA fans: There was no way to see this coming.

But that’s simply not true. This was no secret or surprise.

The timeline for Ivey’s descent into extreme evangelism is fairly easy to track. The guard was baptized at home in June 2024, affirming a new commitment to a born-again style of evangelical Christianity that prioritizes the concept of the “Great Commission” for Christians to spread their religion. That baptism marked a turning point, after which Ivey became increasingly focused on using his platform to evangelize.

Religion — and, specifically, Christianity — is not a taboo topic in an NBA locker room. Teams provide chapel services. Players read the Bible before games and praise Jesus after them. It takes a remarkable level of extremity for a player’s faith to become remotely notable in this type of environment; somehow, Ivey accomplished that feat.

Ivey’s dependence on his faith deepened when he shattered his fibula in January 2025, a gruesome injury that required extensive recovery and threatened his NBA future. Only nine days after suffering that catastrophic injury, Ivey went on “Sports Spectrum” — a podcast focused on the intersection of faith and sports — to talk about his religious journey.

In that interview, Ivey revealed that he “definitely was sexually abused as a kid” and grappled with addiction to alcohol before embracing his conception of Christianity. He also spoke about struggling with anger management in many aspects of his life, including his marriage.

“Before I married my wife, we had went through trials together,” Ivey said on the podcast. “I dealt with anger. She had to deal with a lot of anger that I had in my heart. That turned into me being somewhat an abuser. I’m not saying that was it, but there was things that I tried to fill in my heart. I’m so grateful for my wife because she’s been there for me through thick and thin.”

That was a year ago. Since then, Ivey became increasingly insistent on pushing his faith into his professional life. He lost the ability to provide basic answers to the media without redirecting the topic to religion. He pressed staffers and teammates with uncomfortable questions. All of this information was publicly accessible with a simple Google search or phone call to any individual who had access to the Detroit Pistons locker room.

This was not the first time Karnišovas took an unnecessary risk on a clearly troubled player. Last season, he signed Joshua Primo to an Exhibit 10 contract to allow the guard the privilege of rehabbing with the Windy City Bulls. At that time, Primo was essentially out of the league after serving a suspension for exposing himself to female team staffers.

Primo never suited up for the Bulls. That’s not really the point. Karnišovas willingly associated the team brand with a player the league said “engaged in inappropriate and offensive behavior by exposing himself to women.” This steep lack of judgment does not reflect the general ethos or values of the majority within the Bulls organization. But Karnišovas is the one with the power to hire and fire. Twice now, he has been content to wield that authority to embarrass the franchise for next to nothing in return.

In the case of Ivey, the front office should be allotted some grace. Perhaps Karnišovas received assurances that Ivey was receiving sufficient support to negate clear red flags in his personality profile. Maybe the front office felt the Bulls could provide appropriate provisions to prevent further escalation. Ivey clearly felt comfortable voicing increasingly fringe beliefs, but that doesn’t automatically translate into the manic crash-out of the last week, which notably occurred directly after he was shut down with an injury for a second consecutive season.

It’s impossible to extend this grace, however, to an executive too cowardly to face any public acknowledgment of his error. Karnišovas offered nothing — not a public statement, not a private comment — in the wake of Ivey’s tirades. Instead, he placed that burden once again on the shoulders of Donovan, who handled Monday’s meltdown with a stoic professionalism that has become his standard over the many, many times he has been asked to answer for another man’s actions.

How many more times will the Reinsdorfs allow this loop to be repeated? Karnišovas made a mistake. The Bulls paid the price. The man in charge ducked responsibility. It’s a dull, exhausting, pointless pattern. And it certainly isn’t making the Bulls any better as a basketball team or as a cornerstone of Chicago.

Ultimately, I hope Ivey receives the help and care he clearly needs. I hope queer fans of the Bulls and the NBA feel a little safer knowing this league will protect a basic standard of acceptance. But I also hope the Bulls have learned a lesson about the care and character necessary to safeguard both success and safety in this business.

Do your homework. Own your mistakes. Don’t run from accountability. That’s the only way to build and maintain trust in a team, regardless of the results on the court.

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