Meyers Leonard, the NBA player who was criticized for saying an antisemitic slur earlier this year, has opened up for the first time about the backlash he received, according to an article by The Algemeiner.
"I deserve to be punished," he stated during an online event hosted by the Anti-Defamation League.
“But all I can hope for and pray for is for people to be willing to listen, spend time with me and clearly show them the man that I am … I’m constantly asking for forgiveness to show people my heart.”
He added, “I made a very big mistake and one that I wish I could take back … the most difficult part for me is that I caused other people pain. Because I have nothing but love in my heart … I’m sorry for the pain that I have caused. I own my mistake and I will continue to be better because of it.”
Leonard issued an apology shortly after the video of him using the antisemitic slur surfaced in early March. In the apology posted on Instagram he said, “I am deeply sorry for using an antisemitic slur during a live stream yesterday. While I didn’t know what the word meant at the time, my ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong.”
He hadn't posted anything on Instagram since, until recently.
Leonard posted a lengthy Instagram post, stating, “Over the last five months, I have immersed myself in the process of learning about the Jewish community."
View this post on Instagram
The basketball player said during the webinar, “It’s been an admittedly difficult process to understand how this came out of my mouth, and quite frankly it was ignorance.”
On March 9, while he played Call of Duty on Twitch with another person, he responded to another player shooting him from afar in-game with the slur, saying: “Don’t f***ing snipe me, you f***ing kike b***h.”
Meyers Leonard says racial slurs while playing CoD pic.twitter.com/WHwUnbV0pR
— Main Team (@MainTeamSports) March 9, 2021
The next day he was in contact with a local rabbi in Miami. That week, he met with the rabbi to talk about his actions, which he described as “one of the most difficult talks I’ve ever had in my life but one of the most important.”
Others spoke at the ADL event, including Jewish WNBA champion Alysha Clark, a former member of the Israeli women's national basketball team, and a student from Connecticut who experienced antisemitism in her school.
Watch the full ADL event here: