A group of Utah rabbis were told to remove signs that declared “I’m a Jew and I’m proud” from a basketball game on Monday because they were told it was causing a distraction to the players.
Rabbi Avremi Zippel is a longstanding Utah Jazz fan and was at the Delta Center Monday night to see the team face the Dallas Mavericks.
He and three other rabbis brought the signs to protest the involvement of Kyrie Irving, now a Mavericks player, who was suspended from the Brooklyn Nets in 2022 for tweeting a link to a movie widely considered to be antisemitic and for initially failing to disavow it.
The Anti-Defamation League rejected Irving’s subsequent donation of $500,000 and Nike severed its commercial ties with him.
Zippel said in a string of posts on X that Irving spotted the sign early in the first quarter and told him: “No need to bring that to a game.” Zippel said Irving then spoke to Mavericks security staff, before Jazz officials came to check the rabbis’ tickets and tell them to put the signs away.
The Jazz said in a statement that the signs were in breach of its audience code of conduct that maintains games must be played “without distraction or disturbance.”
“During an out-of-bounds play in the first quarter of yesterday’s Jazz game against the Dallas Mavericks, there was a group sitting courtside whose signs sparked an interaction with a player that created a distraction and interfered with the play of game,” the statement said.
The statement said that a “part-time employee” who told the rabbis that the content of the signs was problematic was “incorrect.”
“The issue was the disruptive interaction caused by usage of the signs, not the content of the signs,” the statement said.
Zippel wrote on X on Tuesday night that the Jazz took the side of Irving and said the team had cited a spurious policy to get the signs taken down.
“Bottom line: there was one person, in a building of 18,000+, that was triggered by sign that says ‘I’m a Jew and I’m proud,’ Why that bothers…
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