Grant Napear is no longer the Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer or a local California radio host after he tweeted “All Lives Matter” in response to a question about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Sports 1140 KHTK and the NBA team announced Tuesday that Napear was out of both gigs, the Sacramento Bee reported.
“All Lives Matter” is a slogan often used to try to invalidate the Black Lives Matter movement.
KHTK’s parent company said in a statement that Napear’s Sunday evening tweet was “particularly insensitive” amid the ongoing national unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed when a white police officer dug a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“After reviewing the matter carefully, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with Grant,” the statement read, per Sports Illustrated.
The Kings said that Napear had resigned from their operation and thanked him “for his contributions to the team.”
In a statement issued by the Kings, Napear, 60, expressed gratitude for fans’ support.
He had earlier apologized for the tweet, telling the Bee on Monday: “I had no idea that when I said ‘All Lives Matter’ that it was counter to what BLM was trying to get across.”
The longtime Sacramento media figure landed in hot water Sunday when former Kings star DeMarcus Cousins tweeted out to Napear for his take on Black Lives Matter.
“ALL LIVES MATTER...EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!,” Napear responded.
What happened next indicated some previous tension between Napear and Black players.
Cousins wrote that the reply was “as expected.” Matt Barnes, another former Kings player, called Napear a closet racist. Ex-team member Chris Webber also chimed in.
“We know and have known who grant is,” Webber wrote. “The team knows as well. I’ve told them many times. They’ve seen it.”
Napear once defended then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling after a tape surfaced in 2014 of him asking his girlfriend not to bring Black people to the games. “This is a man in his 80s that had an African-American general manager, Elgin Baylor, and an African-American coach in Doc Rivers. Think about that for a minute,” Napear said, per USA Today.
Sterling was forced to sell the team.
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