The Bulls made a swift roster move Monday, waiving guard Jaden Ivey for conduct detrimental to the team just hours after he posted a lengthy social media video that included, what the team considered to be, “anti-gay comments” and broader remarks about religion and culture.
Ivey, 24, had gone live on Instagram multiple times over the past week after Chicago shut him down for the rest of the season because of injury last Thursday. In a Monday morning stream, he criticized the NBA’s public support for Pride Month and used language that quickly became the center of the story. “The world proclaims LGBTQ, right?” Ivey said during the video stream. “They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA does, too. They show it to the world. They say, ‘Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.’ They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it on the streets. Unrighteousness.”
BREAKING: The Chicago Bulls are waiving Jaden Ivey after he spoke out against the NBA for promoting ‘Pride Month’ and unrighteousness, according to ESPN.
Ivey recently announced that he was alive in Christ.
“They proclaim Pride Month in the NBA. They show it to the world. They… pic.twitter.com/1kxiL36ygn [1]
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 30, 2026 [2]
The Bulls did not wait long to act. By Monday, the team had cut ties with Ivey, ending a short and unusual stint in Chicago that began when the franchise acquired him from the Detroit Pistons before last month’s trade deadline. The separation came before the Bulls’ game Monday night against the Spurs in San Antonio, where coach Billy Donovan addressed the situation without getting pulled into a public debate over Ivey’s personal views. Donovan instead pointed to team standards and workplace expectations. “There’s a certain level of expectations and standards that are here,” Donovan told reporters. “Everybody comes with their own personal experiences, right? But we have to all be professional, there has to be a high level of respect for one another, and we’ve got to help each other and be accountable to those standards.”
Later Monday evening, Ivey went live again and questioned the team’s explanation for the move while continuing to speak at length about religion. “[The Bulls] said my conduct is detrimental to the team,” he said. “Why didn’t they just say, ‘We don’t agree with his stance on LGBTQ’? Why didn’t they say that? … How is it conduct detrimental to the team? What did I do to the team? What did I do to the players?”
The timing closed the book on a brief Chicago chapter that never really got started on the floor. Ivey appeared in only four games for the Bulls and last played on Feb. 11 before the All-Star break. Last week, the team announced he would be shut down for the rest of the season because of a sore left knee. His health had already been a major issue before the trade. After being selected with the No. 5 pick in the 2022 NBA draft, Ivey became an early fixture for a rebuilding Pistons team, but knee problems limited him to 30 games in the 2024-25 season and kept him out for the first 15 games this season.
There had also been signs that his role and standing were shifting before the waiver. On Feb. 19 against the Raptors, Ivey did not play because of a coach’s decision, marking the first healthy scratch of his NBA career. After that game, he told reporters that his life and outlook had changed. “I’m not the J.I. I used to be. The old J.I. is dead,” Ivey said. “I’m alive in Christ no matter what the basketball setting is.”
Ivey had long been open about his religious beliefs during his time in Detroit, but during his stint with the Bulls, that expression became more pronounced. His recent live streams often stretched close to an hour and touched on subjects that included depression, religion, music lyrics, anti-Catholicism, abortion and other personal commentary. At the same time, Chicago had originally hoped he could be part of its longer-term plans after the trade. Donovan said before Monday night’s game that the franchise believed Ivey might fit into its future when it acquired him. Because Ivey did not agree to a contract extension with Detroit last summer, he is headed into free agency this offseason.
The move leaves Ivey’s next basketball step unresolved and ends a short stay in Chicago that produced more headlines off the court than on it. It also closes a run with the Bulls that went from trade deadline gamble to offseason free-agent question in a matter of weeks.