Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Amar’e Stoudemire clarifies why he’s leaving his Brooklyn Nets job: Shabbat observance issues

The Jewish former All-Star said he has not been able to ‘grow in the coaching space because I don’t work on Shabbat’

(JTA) — Former basketball star Amar’e Stoudemire raised some eyebrows when he disclosed last week that he is leaving the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets after two seasons as a player development assistant coach. His comments about how the situation surrounding notoriously unvaccinated star player Kyrie Irving hurt the team’s chemistry made headlines, and some speculated that Stoudemire’s relationship with the Nets might have soured over time.

But on Wednesday, Stoudemire aimed to set the record straight in a video on his Instagram page: the real reason he is leaving the job is because it has interfered with his Shabbat observance.

Stoudemire, a former NBA All-Star who has steadily grown more religious over the past decade and formally converted to Judaism while living in Israel in 2020, said that he told Nets coach Steve Nash that he has not been able to “grow in the coaching space because I don’t work on Shabbat.”

“Coaching is such a grind, and it requires you to be there full time,” he added. “The Nets organization want people who can be there full time, and I totally understand that. Therefore it was a mutual understanding.”

Stoudemire also talked about Kyrie Irving’s religiosity and activism; the Nets guard has become an observant Muslim in recent years and has spoken out about racism in the United States.

“Criticizing Kyrie — why would I criticize someone who’s [the same] as I am? I also fast during the NBA season, for Yom Kippur,” he said. “I’m also a guy who’s an activist who speaks about African-American communities and so forth.”

Stoudemire played for the New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns and, from 2016 to 2019, he played for the Israeli team Hapoel Jerusalem, of which he is still part owner, and later for Maccabi Tel Aviv. His well-documented conversion and embrace of Judaism — which has included everything from Orthodox Torah study to starting a kosher wine line to looking for a “shidduch,” or Jewish match — was the subject of an episode of HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.