Jaden Ivey Says He Nearly Attempted Suicide – His Decision to Speak Publicly Is Changing the NBA’s Approach to Mental Health.

This story has an easy-to-tell version that is incorrect. The simple version is as follows: a young NBA player publicly collapsed on social media after making offensive remarks and being waived. There is enough surface truth in that version for it to spread widely, and it has. However, it ignores the most important part, which took place prior to any controversy, when a 24-year-old was sitting by himself with prescription pills in his hand and the only thing holding him back was his wife’s voice.

On January 1, 2025, while playing for the Detroit Pistons, Jaden Ivey broke his fibula. He later claimed that it was the first major injury he had sustained while playing basketball. A broken bone may seem like a manageable setback to those outside of professional sports—painful, annoying, and transient. An injury that keeps you off the court for months can feel like the floor itself vanishing in the world of an NBA player, particularly a young player still establishing his reputation in the league. Professional athletes describe their identity, routine, and daily physical purpose as essential to their functioning, but it all ends. The psychological burden of recovery, along with what Ivey described as a deeper spiritual crisis, brought him to a place that most people never publicly acknowledge. Recovery is isolating in a way that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

Jaden Ivey — Player Profile & Key Events Timeline (2025–2026)

On April 1, 2026, a day after the Chicago Bulls waived him, Ivey spoke on the PinPoint Podcast and revealed that he had considered suicide several times during that time. He talked about being in possession of oxycodone pills. There was his wife. She discouraged him. During the conversation, he admitted, “I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve almost committed suicide multiple times.” God was gracious enough to keep me here, so I don’t feel guilty. Something about that statement’s directness—its lack of hedging and refusal to soften it—cut through the clutter surrounding everything else he’d said that week. This was a person describing the brink of something genuine, regardless of what else was going on in the whirlwind of controversy surrounding his release.

It would be dishonest to completely divorce the circumstances surrounding Ivey’s waiving from the mental health narrative because they are truly complex. The Bulls fired him for “conduct detrimental to the team,” citing a string of Instagram livestreams in which he publicly criticized players like LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Anthony Edwards, called Catholicism “a false religion,” and expressed opposition to the NBA’s LGBTQ+ advocacy. The remarks were provocative.

The NBA reacted appropriately, having developed a strong institutional commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion. Ivey himself noted, quite rightly, that Edwards had made similar homophobic remarks in 2022, was fined $40,000, and went on to play because, as Ivey put it bluntly, “he makes them money.” Regardless of whether that comparison is accurate or deceptive, it raises important questions about how consistently league standards are applied at various roster importance levels. That tension shouldn’t be ignored because it doesn’t go away neatly.

The fact that both are true at the same time makes the situation truly challenging to maintain. The NBA’s response to Ivey’s public remarks, which seriously hurt members of the LGBTQ+ community, is consistent with the values the league has worked to uphold over the years. Additionally, Ivey, a 24-year-old, experienced a mental health crisis last year that was so severe that he nearly died. He described feeling physically broken, spiritually lost, abandoned by his family, and isolated by his religious journey. There is a sense that the situation required more than a waiver and a social media cycle as hundreds of thousands of people watch and comment on this in real time via livestreams and podcasts. Despite the league’s recent advancements in raising awareness of mental health issues, it lacked what it needed at that particular time.

The NBA has made significant progress in recognizing mental health as a legitimate professional issue. Athletes from a variety of sports and eras, such as Kevin Love, DeMar DeRozan, and Naomi Osaka, helped change what athletes are allowed to say in public about psychological struggles. The culture surrounding that discussion has evolved. However, Ivey’s case highlights the framework’s shortcomings: the institutional response quickly narrows to a disciplinary and contractual calculation when a player’s mental health crisis is intertwined with contentious speech and the person in distress is also the one causing harm to the public. The person at the center of the controversy, the one who claimed that his wife’s voice prevented him from swallowing a handful of pills, could easily become lost in that calculation.

Jaden Ivey’s future is still unknown, both on and off the court. He affirmed that he will get his entire season salary of $10.1 million. It’s unclear if any team will sign him, and that will depend on things other than his basketball skills. However, his public remarks about suicidal thoughts, injuries, and loneliness are the kind of revelations that don’t fit back into the box. It’s being heard by other young athletes who are observing from their own rehab and locker rooms. A few of them have comparable weights. That’s worth something, at least.