Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry has been fined $25K by the NBA for recent comments about Anthony Davis, league sources tell Malika Andrews of ESPN.com (Twitter link).
After Milwaukee showed up on Davis’ alleged four-team list of preferred destinations, Lasry spoke to Mitch Lawrence of Sporting News about it, mentioning the Pelicans‘ All-Star big man by name.
“I saw that report, and I think it’s great,” Lasry said at the time, referring to Davis’ wish list. “It’s a little bit of what we want. We want players to come and play in Milwaukee. And part of it is, when you’re winning and you’re setting a standard for excellence, people see that. People want to win. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re in Milwaukee, New York or L.A. The whole goal is winning. So we hope it would be players like Anthony Davis and others who want to come to Milwaukee.”
Lasry also acknowledged to Lawrence that it would have been difficult for the Bucks to put together a trade package for a player like Davis at the deadline, since most of their best players are on expiring contracts and they’ve traded away multiple first-round picks.
While Lasry’s comments were fairly innocuous, I noted last week that he might have crossed over into tampering territory by mentioning Davis by name, which is frowned upon by the league. While the NBA apparently agreed, a $25K fine isn’t a massive anti-tampering penalty. By comparison, the Lakers were fined $500K in 2017 for tampering related to Paul George and were hit with a $50K fine last year when Magic Johnson raved about Giannis Antetokounmpo.
But Magic Johnson makes a comment the first fine with 250 K and the second 500 K this Yahoo gets only 25K
Magic is the king of tampering. I wonder if the league will allow him to train Simmons.
If they allow that, they have to allow Michael Jordan to work with whomever he’d like to have. Magic got the $500,000 because the NBA took Rob Pelinka’s cell phone and found texts to Paul George’s agent. I’m a Pacer fan, we would know, so would Pop. It’s time to put a stop to this tampering s–t!.
Are you Thomas Swanson
He didn’t recruit him in this quote though. Magic came right out and said he wanted George. Huuuge difference.
Tomato Tomato
In 2014, the Bucks were sold for $550M.
2018, Forbes valued them $1.350B, up 26% year before.
Their new $524 million arena, Fiserv Forum, just opened August, 26, 2018
What’s $25K to this guy?
Seriously? Why is this a fine lmao
I wish owners, FO’s, coaching staff & players could just throw about other players name, never understood the silly tampering rules, is a free market if you wanna say you would like to have such a player on your team, that is great, everyone likes to be valued, then you have to go & get him, real useless rule that makes the NBA look silly.
So this guy should have said is this amazing PF, best in history that we would like to have in our team & we are so happy he mentioned us… that really makes it so hard for all to know who is he talking about it, as I said it is a childish rule that I wish didn’t exist.
All centrally planned entities require you to give up free speech. The NBA isn’t a free market. It’s a democrats version of a free market. That’s why it’s silly and absurd.
This is getting stupid. A person mentioning another player not tampering. Why is the media allowed to ask these questions if they result in a fine then?
The Lakers also reached out to George in some fashion
And STILL no fine for the Lakers out and out begging for Davis to come to them. Nah, nothing to see THERE.
So how big of a fine are the Knicks going to get for putting a picture of KD on their season ticket promotion?
Maybe there’s no rule against it, because nobody imagined this particular depravity.
So you’re telling me that if you basically say you’re proud of the way you’re small market organization is performing and setting a standard for winning after decades of subpar seasons you’re going to get fined for that .. okay makes sense ..
That is absolutely ridiculous to be fined for a speculative comment. Freedom of speech NBA, learn it