Jaden Ivey has been dominating the headlines lately, but not for the right reasons. The Chicago Bulls waived Ivey on Monday for conduct detrimental to the team after he made anti-LGBTQ comments on Instagram. Concerns had also been raised about the 24-year-old’s mental health previously due to some controversial religious comments, and a troubling video has now resurfaced on X.
Ivey had appeared on the Sports Spectrum podcast in 2025, where he made some startling revelations about his personal life.
“I think as a child I just never felt love before,” Ivey said. “I never felt what true love felt like, and as I grew up, there were some traumas that I went through, but I don’t really explain to people, but I definitely was sexually abused as a kid. There was some things that I saw that I don’t really even talk about, but I know it was a seed that Satan tried to use at an early age, and that was tough, obviously growing up.”
That is horrifying. An individual who gets sexually abused growing up is likely to be negatively shaped by that trauma. This doesn’t excuse what Ivey has been saying lately, which includes a wild shot at Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry, but you can perhaps get why he is the way he is today.
What makes these claims even more shocking is that you would have thought something along these lines would never happen to Ivey. We often hear about kids who grew up poor being abused, but he is the son of former NFL player Javin Hunter and current Notre Dame women’s basketball head coach Niele Ivey.
Ivey’s mother being at Notre Dame is another notable aspect of this story. The 24-year-old claimed over the weekend that “Catholicism is a false religion,” and that wouldn’t have been very well received at a university that was founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
Getting back to this clip, Ivey made some concerning admissions about himself as well.
“As I grew up, I just tried to seek the wrong things,” Ivey stated. “Even in high school, I tried sleeping with women to fulfill a certain void in my heart that, as I continue to just grow as a man, I was trying to fill a void. I slept with women, I tried drinking alcohol, I tried going out to party, tried to fit in with the world basically. I tried to dress like other people, I tried to look like other people.
“I didn’t necessarily felt love before,” Ivery continued. “And as I went through college, even in the league before I married my wife, we had went through trials together. I dealt with anger, she had to deal with a lot of anger that I had in my heart, and that turned into me somewhat being a abuser.
“And I’m not saying that that was it, but there was things that I tried to fill in my heart,” Ivey added. “There was voids that I tried to fill, and I’m so grateful for my wife because she’s been there for me through thick and thin.”
I thought the Jaden Ivey stuff was funny then today I saw this and it is not funny anymore pic.twitter.com/SwzTz8fmR0
— kingtisemedia (@kingtisemedia) March 30, 2026
Ivey admitted to abusing his wife, Caitlyn. She still chose to stick by his side, and they now have three children together.
Ivey also revealed here that he had a pornography addiction before the birth of his first child, Noah. He reached out to Jesus Christ to change his life and became a changed man afterward.
