CHICAGO — The Chicago Bulls are waiving Jaden Ivey after the guard made anti-LGBT statements in a series of lengthy religious tirades on Instagram, a source confirmed to the Chicago Tribune.

Ivey spoke for more than three hours in total during three separate Instagram live sessions over the last week. Several hours later, the Bulls made the decision to waive the guard, who was in the final weeks of his contract. In a statement, the team referred to “conduct detrimental to the team.”

“They show it to the world,” Ivey said during an Instagram Live session on Monday. “They say come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness. They proclaim it. They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it in the streets. Unrighteousness. So how it is that one can’t speak righteousness? How are they to say that this man is crazy?”

ESPN was the first to report the team’s decision to waive Ivey.

The Bulls had announced Thursday that Ivey, 24, had been shut down for the season due to a knee injury.

The Bulls acquired Ivey at the trade deadline in a three-team trade that involved sending Kevin Huerter to the Detroit Pistons. Although Ivey was coming to the end of a four-year $32.95 million contract, the Bulls front office hoped to be the first team in line for the guard’s restricted free agency this summer.

Ivey was an exciting prospect in his early years with the Pistons, but his career was derailed in January 2025 when he suffered a gruesome broken leg in a game against the Orlando Magic. His rehabilitation lasted nearly a year and the guard still hadn’t recovered his former explosivity when he was traded to the Bulls in February.

The guard played extensive minutes in his first four games with the Bulls until Feb. 19, when he was held out of a game as a coach’s decision while head coach Billy Donovan was away from the team following his father’s funeral. After the game, Ivey explained that he was still dealing with knee pain in his left leg in between rambling diversions in which he referred to himself in the third person, stating the “old J.I. was dead” and repeatedly shifted basketball questions back to religious topics.

This aspect of Ivey’s locker room demeanor was well known in Detroit, where several sources said the guard became increasingly vocal about his faith over the years. Ivey and his wife, Caitlyn, were baptized in their backyard pool in June 2024. Staffers and media members became familiar with the guard’s insistence on steering conversations back toward his evangelical Christian beliefs, even if those answers did not relate to the topic at hand.

Over the last week, Ivey went live on Instagram on three separate occasions on March 26, 28 and 30. The video on March 28 extended over an hour. In the comments, Ivey argued with fans about the concept of sin.

“Catholicism is a false religion,” Ivey wrote in one Instagram comment responding to a fan who asked if he went to confession.

Throughout the latter two videos, Ivey spoke to the camera while driving his car and rambling through various evangelical talking points.

Ivey is the son of Notre Dame women’s coach Niele Ivey and former Notre Dame wide receiver Javin Hunter. He was born in South Bend, Ind., and played his college ball for Purdue before the Pistons drafted him in 2022.

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