Philadelphia 76ers’ guard J.J. Redick landed in hot water on Sunday over an online video showing him purportedly saying a racial slur aimed at Chinese people.
Redick appeared in a video, with other NBA players, wishing fans a happy Chinese New Year, when he allegedly uttered the slur aimed at NBA fans in China. He took to Twitter explaining that he got “tongue tied” and that the word used was “not in his vocabulary.”
He issued a longer and more detailed explanation of what happened.
https://twitter.com/JJRedick/status/965443290324664320
“Had I known it sounded anything like that, I would have been mortified and recorded the greeting over again,” Redick said.
He is getting support from his fellow players. Nets point guard Jeremy Lin jumped to Redick’s defense, saying the two spoke and he doesn’t believe that it was his intention to say anything offensive.
“I truly believe he didn’t say a racial slur and that he has a great deal of respect towards Chinese people,” Lin posted on Twitter.
wanted to address this… pic.twitter.com/3oB2mUvQpc
— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) February 19, 2018
Check out the video below at the 52-second mark to hear Redick’s offending remarks.
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Teddy is a multimedia journalist who serves as the culture and political writer for EBONY. His work has appeared in NBC's Owned and Operated stations, as well as DNAInfo, which covered local neighborhood news in New York City. He received his Masters in Journalism from the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY in 2017.