NBA investigating allegations of bigoted remarks, racially-charged threat made by Utah Jazz vice president

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SportsPulse: USA TODAY Sports’ Jeff Zillgitt examines essentially the latest instance of the NBA being a league that encourages its avid gamers and coaches to talk up and consume their platform, this time within the aftermath of the riots on the Capitol building.

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The Utah Jazz acknowledged in an announcement they are cooperating with an NBA investigation into passe guard Elijah Millsap’s allegations that govt vice president of basketball operations Dennis Lindsey made racially-charged threats within the route of an exit assembly on the discontinuance of the 2014-15 season.

“The Jazz group has zero tolerance for discriminatory habits of any kind,” the team acknowledged in an announcement Thursday. “We buy these matters significantly. We now cling proactively engaged open air counsel to work in coordination with the NBA to thoroughly investigate this topic. We watch a comprehensive and honest overview of the difficulty.”

In a sequence of tweets posted on Wednesday evening, Millsap accused Lindsey of making “bigot remarks” within the route of his exit interview that integrated Jazz coach Quin Snyder. Millsap alleged that one of Lindsey’s remarks integrated pronouncing, “‘If you vow but another be aware, I’ll cut your Shaded ass and send you wait on to Louisiana.”

Lindsey told Salt Lake Metropolis reporters, “I categorically vow making that assertion.” 

“Honestly, I don’t be wide awake the conversation, but I’d be panicked,” Snyder acknowledged following the Jazz’ buy over the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday. “I’m able to’t fathom Dennis pronouncing something like that.”

Millsap played with the Jazz within the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. Lindsey is in his second season because the Jazz’s govt vice president of basketball operations after serving the old seven seasons because the team’s overall manager.

Nearing the discontinuance of the 2018-19 season, Lindsey was as soon as bothered when a Jazz fan directed tainted comments at Oklahoma Metropolis’s Russell Westbrook within the route of a Jazz-Insist game in Salt Lake Metropolis.

In a raw and emotional interview with USA TODAY Sports, Lindsey acknowledged, “Love Pop (San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich) acknowledged, we have to chat about our nationwide sin. “Of us would possibly perchance presumably honest vow, ‘Hello, no topic, what the fan acknowledged was as soon as a minute tell.’ Effectively, it be now now not. What it does is salvage all people in fact feel minute, and every Caucasian will cling to gentle buy a stare at themselves and stare at their heart.”

Lindsey grew up in Clute, Texas, the son of of us who supervised community homes for deprived formative years. Lindsey and his household as soon as rapidly lived in those multi-racial homes.

“The tell I would possibly perchance well vow to this topic when you reside with anyone in nearer quarters, you already know there could be one creep — the human creep,” Lindsey acknowledged in 2019. “That’s what we are going to be succesful of cling to gentle be talking about. That’s our nationwide dialogue and we steady cling to confess the place apart it be at and the place apart our hearts are. Loads of it’s wretchedness and lack of knowledge.”