At just 22 years of age, new Bulls guard Josh Giddey has been subject to enough online criticism to last a lifetime.
The former OKC player got himself into hot water after allegations of him having a relationship with a minor surfaced in late 2023.
However, he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the NBA and the Police.
But, the online taunting hasn’t let up.
The Bulls posted something as innocent as a Happy Birthday post for Giddey this week, and the post got over 47K reactions and thousands of comments, a lot of them were negative and some even tried to correlate Giddey and disgraced rapper P Diddy.
Giddey himself also commented on the post, and said, “Thank u 💖. Damn… these comments 😟.”
The Chicago guard got super candid about what he sees online and admits how hard it is sometimes.
“I see everything, and it’s hard, because we’re people first,” Giddey said, via AllChgo. “Obviously we’re athletes, and we’ve got a big platform, and we’re viewed by millions and people around the world. But it obviously hurts to see that stuff. But at the same time, you’ve got to look at it from a different perspective: you’re living out your dream, you’re in the NBA. You shouldn’t let online stuff and comments like that bother you too much. But as easier said than done, because we read it and we see it, and a lot of people will see 99 great things, but you remember the one bad thing you see.”
This isn’t the first time Giddey has spoken up about the hard times.
During his end-of-season interview with the Thunder in May, Giddey shared that “there were days when you don’t feel like getting out of bed.”
No doubt he is looking to put all of that behind him and have a great first year with a promising young Bulls team.
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