This morning’s bizarre barrage of tweets by Paul George bemoaning the indefinite suspension of Ray Rice for punching his then-fiancé has been met with some understated outrage — primarily because George apologized and removed the tweets. Still, Pacers president of basketball ops, Larry Bird, felt the need to address them in a statement released by the team.
Here’s what Bird said in the official release put out earlier today:
“Paul George’s tweets from earlier were thoughtless and without regard to the subject of domestic violence and its seriousness in society. We have talked to Paul to strongly express our displeasure and made it clear that the NBA and the Pacers’ organization will not condone or tolerate remarks of this nature. Paul understands that he was wrong and why his tweets were so inappropriate and is very apologetic.”
Here’s Paul’s apology in full:
“I want to apologize to all victims of domestic abuse for my insensitive tweets. They were obviously without proper understanding of the seriousness of the situation and I sincerely regret my poor choice of words.”
Not much more to say about this, except that Paul hasn’t dug himself any further into this hole by doubling down on the comments. They were in poor form, and he understands that now.
Though not as young as Joel Embiid, and more overt in his tolerance of Rice’s awful behavior, George hasn’t lashed out after the — we’re guessing — overwhelmingly negative response to his series of tweets. We applaud his humble acknowledgement that he made a mistake and his full contrition.
This Ray Rice story has been hitting everyone right in the gut, and we hope NBA players can avoid the subject moving forward, or at the very least keep whatever contentious thoughts they might have on the subject to themselves. George, for one, knows that better than anyone now.
What do you think?
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