Meyers Leonard speaking during an ADL webinar on Aug. 20, 2021. Photo: Screenshot.

NBA free agent Meyers Leonard opened up for the first time publicly last week about the backlash he received for saying an antisemitic slur earlier this year and the lessons he’s since learned from the incident.

“I deserved to be punished,” the former Miami Heat center said during an online event hosted Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League. “But all I can hope for and pray for is for people to be willing to listen, spend time with me and clearly show them the man that I am … I’m constantly asking for forgiveness to show people my heart.”

He added, “I made a very big mistake and one that I wish I could take back … the most difficult part for me is that I caused other people pain. Because I have nothing but love in my heart … I’m sorry for the pain that I have caused. I own my mistake and I will continue to be better because of it.”

On March 9, Leonard uttered an antisemitic slur during a live-streamed session of the video game “Call of Duty: Warzone” on the gaming platform Twitch. Following his remarks, the NBA fined the athlete $50,000, immediately suspended him for one week and required him to participate in a cultural diversity program. Leonard also lost a number of gaming sponsorships and was traded from the Heat to the Oklahoma City Thunder, which released him shortly after.

The basketball player, who previously apologized for making the antisemitic remark, said during the webinar, “It’s been an admittedly difficult process to understand how this came out of my mouth and quite frankly it was ignorance.”

He detailed how his “world came crashing down” after the incident, and the steps he has subsequently taken to educate himself about antisemitism and the Jewish community. He made the remark on a Tuesday and noted that by the following day, he was already in contact with a local rabbi in Miami. On that Thursday morning, Meyers said, he met with the rabbi to take about his actions — which he called “one of the most difficult talks I’ve ever had in my life but one of the most important.”

“I cried, and cried, and cried, and asked for forgiveness and grace,” he recounted. “It was difficult but one of the most powerful days of my life.”

The following day he attended his first Shabbat dinner at the rabbi’s house, and later he helped with a Passover food drive, spoke to Holocaust survivors and visited the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach with his wife, an experience which he described as a “very, very emotional.”

“Just seeing and understanding some of the pain and suffering, [and] just horrific things that have happened were hard for me to see, but it’s important,” he recalled about visiting the Holocaust Memorial. “And that’s why I know [that] through garnering all this information and education, I can become and will be an advocate and a solution to some of these problems that are very clear and evident in our world today. I do believe that I can do that with my voice and I will do that with my platform.”

Leonard also said he’s grateful for the compassion the Jewish community has shown him since the March incident. He told viewers, “It’s filled my heart with joy to be immersed into the Jewish community and have developed many, many powerful relationships across the Jewish community … I am so incredibly thankful truly from the bottom of my heart for the love, compassion, grace [and] forgiveness I’ve been shown from the Jewish community.”

Others who spoke during the ADL event included Jewish WNBA champion Alysha Clark, a former member of the Israeli women’s national basketball team, and Jessica Koyner, a student from Connecticut who experienced antisemitism in her school.

Watch the entire online event hosted by the Anti-Defamation League below.