Shooting guard Anthony Edwards has been one of the most promising young players in all of basketball, but some worrying off-court comments have cast a ton of criticism on the third-year player.
The Minnesota Timberwolves star shared a video on Instagram earlier this month where he shared a disgusting homophobic message towards a group of people.
Anthony Edwards is wild for this man 😭 https://t.co/ccSkkDfe1E
— HaterMuse (@HaterMuse) September 11, 2022
Edwards apologized for his ugly comments later on that day, saying that they were “unacceptable” and that he was raised better than that.
“What I said was immature, hurtful, and disrespectful, and I’m incredibly sorry. It’s unacceptable for me or anyone to use that language in such a hurtful way, there’s no excuse for it, at all. I was raised better than that!” said Edwards in a tweet.
What I said was immature, hurtful, and disrespectful, and I’m incredibly sorry. It’s unacceptable for me or anyone to use that language in such a hurtful way, there’s no excuse for it, at all. I was raised better than that!
— Anthony Edwards (@theantedwards_) September 11, 2022
While it is certainly good that he acknowledged that what he said was awful, it appears that the NBA took notice of these comments, taking action against Edwards for the matter on Tuesday.
According to NBA insider Shams Charania, the NBA has fined Edwards $40,000 for using “offensive and derogatory language on social media”.
Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards has been fined $40,000 for using offensive and derogatory language on social media.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 20, 2022
Only $40,000 for comments as insensitive as this seems to be extremely lenient from the NBA, and many took to social media to express exactly that on Tuesday.
KD was fined $50K last season, Edwards gets $40K for his anti-gay remarks. https://t.co/gcxxRRsJRR
— Jon Krawczynski (@JonKrawczynski) September 20, 2022
Donald Sterling gets banned for life for decades of racism and sexism but Robert Sarver gets banned for 1 year for decades of racism and sexism
Kobe fined $100k in the year TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN for using an anti-gay slur but Anthony Edwards fined $40k in the year 2022
sure.
— Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) September 20, 2022
These fines are soo funny
40k is nothing to a millionaire https://t.co/OjhU3Tpgnp— DG (@DGSEZN) September 20, 2022
Ant makes 130k a game btw. Literal pocket change. https://t.co/Zgr3YtPMnt
— ♤ (@antichrist2u) September 20, 2022
https://twitter.com/Grinch21188235/status/1572291097333993474
The closest situation that we have seen to this is with former Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard, who was fined $50,000 for using anti-semitic language while live-streaming a video game.
Miami handled that situation accordingly, suspending him from team activities for a week before ultimately trading him to the Oklahoma City Thunder where he was later released. Leonard has not been in the NBA since that incident, but Edwards is far beyond the talent level that Leonard ever was.
Chances are the Timberwolves will hope this situation gets swept under the rug, but it is certainly very ugly, especially given such little consequences for Edwards and the Timberwolves organization so far.
