Court Backs Kings Announcer's Firing Over 2020 'All Lives Matter' Tweet
The 9th Circuit ruled Bonneville was within its rights to fire Grant Napear one day after his 2020 reply to DeMarcus Cousins. Here's the fantasy-free reality check.
Cousins is retired from the NBA — pure news item, no roster impact.
- 9th Circuit ruled Thursday, upheld lower-court dismissal
- Napear fired two days after the May 2020 tweet
- Account had ~38,500 tweets before the post
- Napear returned to radio in August 2025
- Cousins asked the BLM question on Twitter/X
A federal appeals court has closed the door — for now — on longtime Kings play-by-play voice Grant Napear's bid to overturn his 2020 firing. On Thursday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Bonneville International Corp. was within its rights to cut him loose after he answered former Kings star DeMarcus Cousins on Twitter with "ALL LIVES MATTER … EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!" during the protests that followed George Floyd's death.
The timeline was brutal for Napear. He was off work in May 2020, watching coverage of the demonstrations, when Cousins — then with the Lakers — asked him for his take on BLM. Napear's reply went up, Bonneville suspended him the next day, and fired him one day after that. He sued, arguing the company punished him for personal political speech unrelated to his job.
The three-judge panel didn't buy it. They leaned on Napear's status as a public figure and his contract language, which required him to hold "a high standard of care and level of responsibility" on social media because it could affect the company's public image. In their read, the tweet involved his celebrity persona and fell within the scope of his professional capacity.
Napear's attorney, Matthew Ruggles, pushed back hard, noting that Napear personally owned the account and had fired off roughly 38,500 tweets before this one — none of it on-air or part of any show. He argued the question of whether it was truly personal expression belongs to a jury, not a court, and said he'll seek a rehearing before the full appeals court and, if that fails, petition the Supreme Court.
For context, Napear had drawn heat before — for defending disgraced ex-Clippers owner Donald Sterling and for later calling former broadcast partner Doug Christie a "coward" over the fallout. He spent five years podcasting and returned to the airwaves last August as a daily host on Fox Sports Radio in Sacramento. The ruling upheld US District Judge Dale Drozd's earlier dismissal.
The Fantasy Angle
Let's be honest: this one lives in the news section, not your lineup. Napear is a broadcaster, and Cousins is long removed from the NBA, so there's nothing here that moves a single roster spot or changes a start/sit call. If you clicked hoping for a waiver-wire nugget, this isn't it — file it under league lore and move on to your actual research.
