Anyone else think this shit is ridiculous? Fining the guy for responding to some douche bag fan in the crowd? Not even at a player or ref.

Now the NBA is going to speak with every team to make sure there are no more "anti-gay" remarks.

Is calling some asshole in the crowd a fag "anti-gay"? Are you serious?

Oh, and this...

http://is.gd/oZRLzl

I might be inclined to think it is worse to go yelling at fans, even obnoxious ones, than to yell at other players or refs. I mean, fans in all sports yell shit at the players and all that. Is it rude? Of course. But, for a few millions buck s a year, take a little heckling and maybe not yell shit at the people who make it possible for you to lead a lavish lifestyle. Players talking shit to each other doesn't bother me and show me a sport where players don't occasionally get pissed in the heat of the moment and yell something at a ref. But fans traditionally have been and should be off limits in my estimation.

And yeah, fag is an anti-gay slur. I always have mixed feelings about how we get so caught up in words more so than in the thoughts and feelings behind them. But, I can't say it's not a slur.

The NBA is a business and they can't have their product being represented like that. They just went through this with Kobe about a month ago.

If they do nothing then they appear to condone the behavior.

I agree with the punishment and if the fan provoked him with any comments, the fan should be tossed too.

Yeah, I will say the arenas should toss out fans who are total jackasses. Players shouldn't be the ones dealing with it though.

bingo

They're almost in putting-out-fire mode. They need to appear to take it seriously.

i'm with derris on this one. an employee using gay slurs while on the job certainly deserves a fine. most employers would at least discipline someone over something like this.

like if i told a chef his soup was a bit salty and he screamed "FUCK YOU FAGGOT" at me from the kitchen. only happened a few times.

this is kind of awesome

the reason i'm calling bullshit on this is because there is a ton of shit that's spit around the court, some probably far worse than 'fag', yet because this is deemed 'anti-gay' and caught on tape, the league has to demand apologies and fine players.

The difference being that calling someone an asshole or a motherfucker slanders only the person you're talking to, whereas calling someone a fag (or a nigger, etc) slanders an identifiable group of people who don't need any more help being slandered.

ie, if calling someone a Dalen meant something incredibly bad, then all the Dalens in the world would be understandably upset.

ie, there's nothing inherently "bad" about being a homosexual. Thus, it should not come to mean "bad." Allowing your employees to use sexual/ethnic slurs on the clock is not smart policy.

haha

uh, the N word gets tossed around all the time.

Yes, but ONLY by the very people it's supposed to offend. They have co-opted the term, and in doing so, rendered it somewhat less damaging. It's a really strange thing to have happened, and a lot of black writers aren't fans of it - you're right about in that in one sense, that it does seem strange to hear one slur used and not others, but again, if it were openly gay men calling each other fag on the court, ok, apples-to-apples comparison. But a straight guy calling another straight guy a fag in order to insult him, that's not the same in any way.

Society is only giving these words more power by assigning different levels of offensiveness to them.

Frankly, I think it's worse to call a fan anything with "fuck" in it than to call them a "faggot".

Wow, it's as though you were completely unaware that you'd written the first sentence by the time you got to the second.

Noah should have gotten a game suspension just for being a moron. Stern was JUST in this position a month ago with Kobe and now he's getting praise for running a league where a team exec can come out of the closet, just to find a star player hasn't been listening to a fucking word anyone said. If someone on my team at work pulled this days after we went through some kind of seminar about avoiding this very thing, I'd send him home.

Dude's half French and pronounces his name "JO-AK-HIM" -- folks in glass houses shouldn't be tossing rocks.

i was thinking of a way to say this...kudos!

No, I understood what I was doing completely.

Also, giving an opinion about society at large coupled with a personal opinion is not necessarily contradictory.

As a father, if you're in the stands with your kid, is it worse that they hear Noah call some heckler a faggot or to hear someone like Kevin Garnett swear a blue streak for 48 straight minutes.

Actually, same scenario, just insert employer.

hey my kid's not going to get seats close enough to the court to hear anything until she's a low-level trophy wife.

and frankly, as a father, it's worse that she hear a player call a fan a faggot, absolutely. she's already around me swearing too much, I doubt there's much KG could say that would offend her, there's nothing new there. but the f-bomb is just rude.

so if the guy he called a fag is gay as well, this is just like niggas calling each other niggas.

no fine. carry on.

and yes, as an employer it would piss me the fuck off. i already work for a "controversial" company- the CEO's going to be pissed if I somehow bring MORE shit down on his head.

These work analogies are pretty bad though guys. I mean it's not like I could get away with 1% of what an NBAer gets away with. And nobody heckles me at work to begin with.

That doesn't mean I don't agree with the fine. The NBA has to do it.

Can't Noah just hold hands with Elton John at the Espys this year and make everything better.