Nearly two years after NBA player Myers Leonard blew up his entire career after yelling an anti-Semitic slur during Call of Duty: Warzone live stream, ESPN reports he signed a 10-day contract with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Read more: NBA player hurled anti-Semitic slurs during Call Of Duty: Warzone Stream [Update]
Leonard is a 1.80 cm tall center who previously played for the Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat from 2012 to 2021. He had a good record as a center, averaging 5.6 points and 3.9 rebounds according to Yahoo Sports. However, he was fined $50,000 and suspended from the NBA for one week in 2021 for use of an anti-Semitic slur during a Military zone live stream on his Twitch channel. After the suspension, Leonard was sold to Oklahoma City Thunder, but was immediately waived. Leonard has been out of the NBA since then, and both should for his actions during a broadcast and while he was “rehabilitating from post-operative nerve damage in his right leg,” according to ESPN.
ESPN Senior NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted on February 20 that Leonard, whose time out of the NBA spans from March 2021 to now, will return to the basketball court for the Bucks. It’s unclear exactly when fans will see Leonard guard the basket, but as on guard assumesThe Bucks are hoping to see if Leonard can help the team make the playoffs.
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Leonard apologized for using an anti-Semitic slur in March 2021, shortly after the incident, saying he “didn’t know what the word meant at the time”. He has since sought the advice of two rabbisin South Florida and met with several Jewish organizations to learn more about anti-Semitism, according to ESPN. He even appeared on ESPN’s sports news and analysis show Outside the lines in January 2023 to talk more about the incident and what he’s learned since then, saying he may have picked up on the use of the anti-Semitic epithet while playing because “over the years, a lot of video games use less than the ideal language’.
“I was sad to lose my job,” Leonard said. “I was sad that I had hurt people, and honestly, anything I cared about in my life, other than taking care of my family, was going to fix that. […] There are absolutely no excuses for what happened that day and ignorance is unfortunately a very real thing. I’m not running from it, but I didn’t know it happened.”