Adam Silver Fined The Warriors Owner $50,000 For Saying He Doesn't Want Ben Simmons On The Warriors

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Over the last few seasons Adam Silver and the NBA have tried to make it seem like they care about tampering and are determined to stop it. Every offseason we see them hand out these tampering fines as if $50K means anything to these billionaire owners or millionaire coaches. Normally, we see these fines come when someone talks about adding a player to their team while that guy is currently under contract

But that is not what happened here with Joe Lacob and the Warriors. In fact, it was the exact opposite. All he did was talk about how Ben Simmons kinda stinks and makes a shit ton of money so the Warriors have no interest in him

Is this breaking the rules? By the letter of the law, I guess. He talked about the availability of a player under contract. But there's just something funny about a guy being fined for declaring that he doesn't want to bring that player onto his team. This has to be the first time this has happened right? I would have loved to see Jacob's face when he learned of the fine. For a guy worth $1.2B, I doubt he cares about the money but the sheer confusion he must have had for getting in trouble because he said the Warriors weren't interested in Ben Simmons would be funny to watch.

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To be honest, as a fan I would want my owner to stay out of stuff like this unless you're Mark Cuban or some shit. That's why you have a basketball department. Bob Myers is one of the best in the business. I'm sure Lacob is just reiterating what Myers told him, but even still. 

Part of me wonders if Adam Silver is starting to get annoyed with this whole Simmons/Sixers situation and did not appreciate an owner of a major market/franchise continuing to lower his trade value. There's no doubt that Silver wants this situation resolved as quickly as possible because the longer it drags on the worse things are going to get. If Simmons sits out games and sets that precedent, that's a problem. Who knows, maybe Morey has been trying to use the Warriors as leverage in other negotiations and Lacob came out and screwed that all up by talking publicly. That I can believe. 

Either way, getting a tampering fine for doing the opposite of tampering is the perfect little wrinkle to this entire fiasco. I feel like we're getting to the point where Silver is going to have to pay a team $50k just to take Simmons so we can be done with this whole thing.