Jaden Ivey’s wife, Caitlyn Ivey, has responded to his recent assertion that she’s stopped speaking to him since he was waived by the Chicago Bulls for Anti-LGBTQ+ comments.
As reported by TMZ, Caitlyn denied that she’s stopped speaking to her husband, with whom she shares three children. “We were communicating all morning of that day,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories. “People say things for attention, do not be deceived.”
In a follow-up post, she added, “If you know me you know I have never once abandoned that man through all the trials… and I still haven’t now. There is obviously a lot more going on, so leave your conspiracies and guesses to yourselves.”
In an Instagram Live following the news that the Bulls had waived the 24-year-old guard, Jaden said that his family has turned their back on him for his comments.
“Those who are around me, those who are my family members betraying me because of what I spoke," he said. "The truth. Betraying me. Saying that I'm losing my mind. Saying that I'm crazy. Saying that I don't know the truth. Those who raised me said that I don't know the truth. 'Man, he's psycho.' He's this, he's that. Those are my own household. All because of the gospel. All because I said the truth. … My wife is in here, and she's not even texting me.”
Before he was waived, Jaden criticized the NBA’s Pride Month initiatives. “The world proclaims LGBTQ, right? They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA does too,” he said. “They say, ‘Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.’” During the same stream, he called Catholicism a “false religion.”
He had become increasingly vocal about his religious beliefs in recent months and was especially combative with teammates and the media. Stephen A. Smith, in reacting to the news of the waiver, said that Jaden was risking his career by making such volatile comments.
“The first order of business is minding your own,” he said. “The second order of business is protecting your own and not doing stuff that’s going to get in your own way, just because you wanted to express yourself on IG. … You got a future to think about, and you just put it in jeopardy because you wanted to express yourself for 42 minutes on IG live.”
