More than five years have passed, and the question still surfaces. On March 8, 2021, Meyers Leonard, then a center for the Miami Heat, used an antisemitic slur during a Call of Duty: Warzone stream on Twitch in front of thousands of viewers. The remark cost him $50,000, a one-week NBA suspension, his place on the Heat roster, and over two years away from professional basketball. What happened after is a story few expected.
| Date of incident | March 8, 2021 |
| Platform | Twitch (Call of Duty: Warzone) |
| Team at the time | Miami Heat |
| NBA punishment | $50,000 fine, one-week suspension |
| Traded to | Oklahoma City Thunder, March 17, 2021 |
| Last NBA game | 2022-23 season, Milwaukee Bucks |
| Announced retirement | March 2, 2025 |
Table of Contents
What Exactly Did Meyers Leonard Say?
Leonard was at home in Miami, streaming Call of Duty: Warzone on Twitch on a Monday night. He had around 69,000 followers on the platform at the time, with a combined audience of over 550,000 across Twitter and Instagram. In a moment of frustration directed at another player in the game, he said:
“F***ing cowards. Don’t f**king snipe at me. You kike bitch.”
The remark was not directed at any Jewish person. It was an outburst of gaming frustration. The clip was recorded that Monday but went largely unnoticed at first. By Tuesday afternoon, March 9, after it spread across social media, it was the number one trending topic on Twitter in the United States.
The word “kike” is a deeply offensive antisemitic slur. Its origins trace to Ellis Island, where illiterate Jewish immigrants used a circle rather than a cross-shaped “X” to sign documents. The Yiddish word for circle is “kikel.” Leonard later said he had no knowledge of the word’s meaning or history when he used it, a claim that several Jewish leaders who spent significant time with him afterward said they found credible.
What Did the NBA and Miami Heat Do?
The response on March 9 came fast.
- The Miami Heat announced Leonard would be away from the team indefinitely and opened their own review of the matter
- The NBA launched an investigation; league spokesman Mike Bass said the league “unequivocally condemns all forms of hate speech”
- FaZe Clan, the esports organisation Leonard had been an investor in since 2019, cut ties with him the same day
- The NBA ultimately fined him $50,000 and suspended him for one week
On March 17 — the day after his suspension ended — the Heat traded Leonard to the Oklahoma City Thunder with a 2027 second-round pick in exchange for Trevor Ariza. OKC released him shortly afterward. He never played a game for them.
Leonard had been earning roughly $9 million that season before a shoulder injury. The Heat held a team option on him worth approximately $10 million for the following year and chose not to exercise it.
Did Meyers Leonard Apologize?
Leonard posted a statement to Instagram on March 9, the day the clip went viral:
“I am deeply sorry for using an anti-Semitic slur during a livestream yesterday. My ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong. I acknowledge and own my mistake and there’s no running from something like this that is so hurtful to someone else.”
The following morning, March 10, New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman, who is Jewish, published an open letter to Leonard publicly on Twitter. Rather than condemn, Edelman reached out.
“I get the sense that you didn’t use that word out of hate, more out of ignorance. Most likely, you weren’t trying to hurt anyone or even profile Jews in your comment. That’s what makes it so destructive. When someone intends to be hateful, it’s usually met with great resistance. Casual ignorance is harder to combat and has greater reach, especially when you command great influence. Hate is like a virus. Even accidentally, it can rapidly spread.”
Edelman closed the letter with an invitation: “I’m down in Miami fairly often. Let’s do a Shabbat dinner with some friends. I’ll show you a fun time.”
Within four days, Leonard took a step that would define the two years ahead.
What Did Meyers Leonard Do After the Incident?
On March 12 — four days after the livestream — Leonard arrived at the home of Rabbi Pinny Andrusier of the Chabad of Southwest Broward in Cooper City, Florida, for a Friday night Shabbat dinner. He had not alerted the media. He simply showed up.
“My thinking was that it would be a good idea for him to come and eat and meet Holocaust survivors and to meet children who idolize him,” Andrusier said.
That night, Leonard sat with 30 members of the surrounding Jewish community. Among them was Michael Kaufman, a Holocaust survivor born in a German displaced persons camp after both his parents survived Auschwitz.
“As he told his story, the place was so quiet you could hear a pin drop,” Andrusier recalled. “Everyone, including Leonard, was crying.”
Leonard described it himself:
“I was there till 12:15 am and it was the most soulful pure thing that maybe I had ever been a part of. I learned that we all need some Shabbat dinner in our lives. To put our phones down, to communicate, to be in the moment.”
That dinner was the beginning, not the end, of what he did. Over the months that followed:
- He spent over 30 hours learning with Rabbi Andrusier
- He delivered more than 500 Passover packages of matzah, wine, and food to Holocaust survivors and elderly adults across South Florida
- He participated in the University of Miami Hillel’s “From Heat to Healing” event, a forum on antisemitism and accountability
- He hosted basketball camps at Miami Beach and Boca Raton Synagogue, giving away autographed game-worn shoes
- He stood in tears at the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial, hearing survivor stories firsthand
- He underwent EMDR therapy, confronting personal trauma he said had gone unaddressed for years
A key relationship during this period was with Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of Boca Raton Synagogue, who told him: “You will never be your full self until you’re willing to forgive yourself.”
In June 2021, speaking publicly at a Boca Raton Synagogue camp, Leonard said: “I’ve had so many events away from the public eye that have just uplifted not only myself, my wife, and our immediate family but my friends.”
He also said, in an interview from that same period, how he handles hateful language when he hears it now: “If I hear someone maybe using language in general, I stop them immediately and I say, ‘Look, I’m not your dad, but take it from me. Words are powerful and they hurt people. This is not funny. This is not a joke.'”
ADL Florida issued a statement saying the league was “encouraged by his efforts to educate himself about the Jewish community, antisemitism, and the impact of his words.” Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, one of America’s most prominent voices on antisemitism, said: “I think the fact that he reached out to a rabbi, went to Shabbat dinner and didn’t immediately alert the press says a lot.” The NBA’s own spokesman confirmed that Leonard had “dedicated considerable time and effort to understand the impact of his comment” and had met with “numerous leaders in the Jewish community.”
When Did Meyers Leonard Return to the NBA?
Leonard had undergone ankle surgery in April 2021 and suffered nerve damage as a result. He missed the entire 2021-22 season recovering from both the ankle and a pre-existing shoulder injury.
In January 2023, he sat down with ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap for Outside the Lines, his most detailed public account of the incident and the years that followed:
“I feel like I’m living in a bad dream. There’s not a hateful cell in my body. And I know that I made a huge, huge mistake.”
Asked directly whether he knew what the word meant when he said it, he answered: “Absolutely not. There are absolutely no excuses for what happened that day, and ignorance, sadly, is a very real thing. And that’s what I was.”
In February 2023, the Milwaukee Bucks signed Leonard to a 10-day contract, his first NBA deal since the incident nearly two years earlier. He called his first practice back “almost euphoric.”
“To take a chance on me like this, it takes a lot of courage,” he said.
His first game back was against the Miami Heat. The Bucks signed him for the rest of the 2022-23 season. He played 11 games. On his continued work with the Jewish community, he told reporters: “It means something to me. It does. It’s part of me. I won’t stop. I can’t stop.”
Where Is Meyers Leonard Now?
On March 2, 2025, Leonard announced his retirement from basketball on X and Instagram, alongside an original country song he wrote titled “Good in Goodbye.”
“I knew after the Milwaukee season that I couldn’t play basketball anymore. It was the hardest decision I never had to make, because my body made it for me,” he wrote.
He released a second single, “Honky Tonk at Home,” in late March 2025. His second son, Jackson James Leonard, was born on May 14, 2025. He and his wife Elle already had a son, Liam, born in June 2022.
Leonard finished his 10-season NBA career having earned at least $60.6 million, playing 456 games, and averaging 5.6 points and 3.9 rebounds. He remains one of the few players listed at seven feet in NBA history to hold a career three-point percentage above 39%.
The antisemitic remark he made during a video game stream in 2021 will almost certainly be the first thing mentioned whenever his name comes up. He said as much himself. What he chose to do about it, verified publicly by rabbis, Holocaust scholars, the ADL, and the NBA itself, is the part that is harder to summarise in a headline.
His own words from the ESPN interview may say it best:
“Walk outside your door, love people. Be kind. Forgive. Through a big mistake of mine, I met a loving community. I met people who had been through extremely difficult times, yet they loved me. And they wanted me to love myself.”
Sources: ESPN, NBA.com, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Times of Israel, Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Fox News, CBS Sports, JNS (Jewish News Syndicate), The Forward, Boston Globe, Basketball-Reference.com, The Daily Illini
