Kyrie Irving offers to pay fine for Texans' Azeez Al-Shaair after LB wrote on eye black in tribute to killed Palestinian girl

Kyrie Irving is a nine-time NBA All-Star and one-time NBA champion. He's also a vocal Palestine supporter. Irving continued to express solidarity with the country on Wednesday amid its ongoing conflict with Israel.

Al-Shaair was fined $11,941 for violating the league's equipment, uniform and player appearance rules when he displayed "Hind Rajab" in writing across his eye black during a Week 1 loss to the Buffalo Bills , according to The Athletic .

Back in 2024, Israeli forces killed Rajab, along with six members of her family, in a car that was under military fire in Gaza. She was 5 years old.

The fine Al-Shaair reportedly received is not due to his pro-Palestinian message specifically. He would have been fined for any unauthorized message written on his eye black, per NFL rules.

Under the league's equipment, uniform and player appearance guidelines, "Article 8" stipulates that "throughout the period on game day that a player is visible to the stadium and television audience (including in pregame warm-ups, in the bench area, and during postgame interviews in the locker room or on the field), players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office."

It also reads: "Items to celebrate anniversaries or memorable events, or to honor or commemorate individuals, such as helmet decals, and arm bands and jersey patches on players' uniforms, are prohibited unless approved in advance by the League office. All such items approved by the League office, if any, must relate to team or League events or personages. The League will not grant permission for any club or player to wear, display, or otherwise convey messages, through helmet decals, arm bands, jersey patches, mouthpieces, or other items affixed to game uniforms or equipment, which relate to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns."

Notably, Al-Shaair — a first-time Pro Bowler and the Texans' Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee last season — has previously been fined by the NFL for penning messages on his eye black.

During the 2025 campaign, he exhibited the words "stop the genocide" in a wild-card playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was reportedly fined $11,593 for violating the aforementioned NFL rules .

He then donned the same message ahead of a divisional-round loss to the New England Patriots, although he didn't wear it during that game.

Afterward, Al-Shaair explained that he was aware that his last fine from the league was coming, but emphasized that whatever he'd have to pay didn't deter him from demonstrating his feelings.

"At the end of the day, it's bigger than me, the things that are going on," Al-Shaair said at the time . "If it makes people uncomfortable, imagine how those people feel. I think that's the biggest thing. I have no affiliation, no connection to these people other than the fact that I'm a human being. If you have a heart, then you are a human being, and you can see what's going on in the world and check yourself real quick. When I'm walking off this field, that's the type of stuff that goes through my head that I have to check myself when I'm sitting here crying about football when there's people who are dying every single day."

Irving's current profile picture on Instagram reflects his support for Palestine. It features a Palestinian child sitting with a book, as Israeli soldiers look down on him beyond a barbed-wire fence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It was reported in April that, in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran beginning, several Palestinian children weren't able to attend school in the village of Umm al-Khair near the city of Hebron. Classes had reportedly been suspended at the start of the Iran war, and then upon their resumption, villagers said the barbed wire had been erected by Israelis, according to a report from Reuters .

Irving's profile picture update has served as a source of inspiration, including for a pair of Palestinian basketball players, as chronicled by The Athletic's Mirin Fader .

Now a point guard for the Dallas Mavericks, Irving's activism regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict goes back years .

In May 2021, he turned the focus of a news conference to the violence occurring overseas. Then playing for the Brooklyn Nets, Irving asserted , "My goal out here, my purpose, is to help humanity, and I can't sit here and not address that."