You’ve heard how some people get paid big bucks to tweet, well, here’s the story of someone who is going to be paying big bucks because of a tweet.
Miami Heat owner Micky Arison was fined $500,000—that’s half a million dollars—on Monday for tweets he made about the NBA lockout.
Arison posted a few tweets Friday night, including a response to someone who referred to those involved with the lockout as “greedy … pigs.” Arison replied by saying “Honestly u r barking at the wrong owner,” according to the Associated Press.
That tweet was later deleted, but the damage had already been done.
The NBA has prohibited owners from publicly speaking about the lockout and fraternizing with players. Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan found out the hard way that the league meant business when he was fined $100,000 in September for discussing the lockout.
The NBA locked out players on July 1 after owners and the National Basketball Players Association weren’t able to agree to a new collective bargaining agreement. The NBA owners are taking a hard line on revenue-sharing. At the end of three days of talks last week, the union was offered a 53–47 split of basketball-related revenue, with the owners taking the largest share. That was an even worse deal than the 50-50 take-it-or-leave-it revenue split the owners had put on the table a week earlier.
