In a Twitch stream of Call of Duty Tuesday afternoon, injured Heat center Meyers Leonard let his anger get the best of him when he got sniped, paused for a moment, and called his opponent a certain anti-semitic racial slur that begins with a K.
The video, which is plainly NSFW, can be seen here.
Leonard’s phone rang very shortly after with a call he attributed to his wife. The audience, perhaps accurately, guessed it was his angry agent.
The Miami big man isn’t a stranger to similar controversy; he was one of the only players to stand for the national anthem in the Orlando bubble instead of kneeling. Afterwards, he referenced “tough conversations” with the BLM community about racism. One might think that taught him a lesson, but apparently, it didn’t quite sink in.
What consequences might he face?
Fortunately for Meyers Leonard and the Heat, this moment happened during the All-Star break while he was sidelined with a season-ending shoulder injury. It’s unlikely that the league or team would look ahead to affect his 2021-22 season.
NFL wide receiver Desean Jackson didn’t miss any playing time after essentially quoting Nazi propaganda during the 2020 offseason. He was, however, bombarded with criticism and pressured to spend the next couple months apologizing.
We can likely expect Leonard to apologize and call the slur something like a, “simple slip-up”. However, the NBA has become the league that stands against racism the most aggressively, and they might not buy the idea that dropping the slur was a simple mistake. He didn’t apologize in the moment, and the “K-word” shouldn’t even be in his arsenal of insults.
Someone might also like to remind Leonard that the owner of the Heat is Micky Arison. Arison is a Jewish man from Israel who sits on the NBA’s Social Justice Coalition. Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, is also Jewish.
It would be difficult to punish Leonard with a suspension since he won’t see the court until the fall, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the league cook up a creative penalty for him by the end of the week. This is Adam Silver’s first chance to set the tone regarding racism in the 2021 season. He won’t go lightly.
Leonard’s mistake may end up angering Micky Arison more than anyone in the NBA. Meyers is an effective defender and a valuable big man at 7’0, but we’ll have to see if his 6 PPG in 20 minutes is enough to redeem him in the eyes of the team.
