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Cleveland Cavaliers head coach John Beilein said he has begun contacting his players to apologize for calling them “thugs” during a team meeting Wednesday at the team hotel in Detroit, according to an ESPN report.

Beilein told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that toward the end of an off-day film session, he didn’t realize he used the term, which he later conceded carries severely negative racial stereotyping toward African-Americans.

The 66-year-old Cavaliers coach insisted to Wojnarowski that he meant to say the team was “no longer playing like a bunch of slugs,” intending to compliment his squad for playing faster in recent games.

Wojnarowski reported that the players immediately fell into a “hush” upon hearing the word Beilein says he said mistakenly. Per the report, players became increasingly “disturbed” in the wake of the meeting. After hearing about the incident, general manager Koby Altman contacted Beilein for an explanation.

“I didn’t realize that I had said the word ‘thugs,’ but my staff told me later I did, and so I must have said it,” Beilein said to ESPN, adding that he had reached out to eight players at the time of the report to explain his side. “I meant to say slugs, as in slow-moving. We weren’t playing hard before, and now we were playing harder. I meant it as a compliment. That’s what I was trying to say.”

Beilein’s first season in Cleveland after over four decades of coaching in college has been rocky on the court, with veteran Kevin Love showing frustration toward teammates and the sideline — even reportedly incurring a $1,000 fine for an outburst on the bench during a loss at Toronto on New Year’s Eve.

The Cavaliers were coming off a hard-fought 115-113 home loss against the Detroit Pistons, Cleveland’s fifth straight loss following a strong 4-1 stretch. The Cavaliers complete the home-and-home series with the Pistons in Detroit on Thursday.

–Field Level Media (@FieldLevelMedia)