“I think he should have been suspended,” Barkley declared, and expressed surprise that Adam Silver, who is Jewish, would let Kyrie “take 40 million dollars insult [his] religion.” 

He continued, “I think the NBA made a mistake. We have suspended and fined people for making homophobic slurs, and that was the right thing to do.” He concluded, “I can’t believe we’re talking about this idiot.”

His counterpart Shaquille O’Neal also weighed in.

Shaq was an early and enthusiastic adopter of Twitter, and he explained that he understood the responsibility of having a large platform. 

“You have to be aware of what you’re doing,” he said. “Some people are conscious; some people are not. I can tell he’s not conscious. He doesn’t really care what’s going on…It hurts me sometimes when we have to sit up here to talk about stuff that divides the game. That we gotta answer for what this idiot has done.”

A third Hall of Famer — and Iving’s “Uncle Drew” co-star — Reggie Miller, criticized NBA players for remaining silent about Kyrie sharing patently antisemitic content. During TNT’s broadcast of the Bulls-Nets game, he said:

“The players have dropped the ball on this case when it’s been one of their own. It’s been crickets. And it’s disappointing, because this league has been built on the shoulders of the players being advocates. Right is right and wrong is wrong. And if you’re gonna call out owners, and rightfully so, then you’ve got to call out players as well. You can’t go silent in terms of this for Kyrie Irving. I want to hear the players and their strong opinions as well, just as we heard about Robert Sarver and Donald Sterling.”

So far the league and the Nets haven’t directed any disciplinary action toward Irving, aside from a tepid NBA statement that didn’t specifically mention Kyrie.

Hate speech of any kind is unacceptable but apparently not so unacceptable to the NBA that there are any consequences for it.