The San Antonio Spurs are currently in the midst of an imbroglio over antisemitism, which makes their visiting opponents this week—the Brooklyn Nets and the NY Knicks—not the best possible choice, assuming the locals were hoping to let the controversy die quietly.
It’s all because of the Spurs star guard Tony Parker, the NY Daily News reports, who came under fire on Sunday for his use of an import antisemitic gesture, described by the Islamists who use it as a “reverse heil Hitler” Nazi salute.
Parker was asked by Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to apologize.
French media outlets published a photo taken earlier this year of the French-born Parker doing the “quenelle,” facing Dieudonne, an antisemitic and Holocaust denying comedian who invented the gesture.
The Spurs host the Nets on Tuesday and the Knicks on Thursday.
“It’s the Nazi salute in reverse,” french Jewish community leader Roger Cukiermantold Reuters.
Parker was photographed in September and in October, making the gesture backstage at two Dieudonne concerts, according to the Daily News.
