Milwaukee gives Meyers chance to revive career

Meyers Leonard is getting another chance at the NBA, nearly two years after he used an anti-Semitic slur while playing a video game that was being livestreamed.

A person with knowledge of the negotiations said Leonard (pictured) and the Milwaukee Bucks have agreed on a 10-day contract, opening the door for the 7-foot (2.13 meters) center to play in an NBA game for the first time since January 2021.

Leonard's career was jeopardized and his reputation was seriously damaged on March 8, 2021 when it was discovered that he used a slur while playing an online game as others watched on a livestream. The Heat told him to stay away from the team indefinitely, NBA commissioner Adam Silver fined him $50,000 and Miami traded him to Oklahoma City.

Leonard said then that he knew he'd used a bad term, but was unaware of the term's meaning. In an apology, he said "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 immediately began scheduling meetings with Holocaust survivors, rabbis in South Florida and other community leaders.

That was the start of him spending much of the last two years trying to atone for what he did — almost all of it quietly, in a deliberate effort to quash any notion his work was simply done to get positive media coverage. He has spoken and worked with several Jewish groups on various things, put on a number of basketball camps for Jewish children and apologized countless times for what he said and his ignorance about what the term meant.

Reuters