The NBA announced today that Philadelphia 76ers guard James Harden has been fined $100,000 by the NBA for public comments on August 14 and 17 indicating that he would not perform the services called for under his player contract unless traded to another team. The league’s investigation, which included an interview of Harden, confirmed that these comments referenced Harden’s belief that the 76ers would not accommodate his request to be traded.
$100K is a huge amount of money for me. For Harden, not so much. Compared to the PG-13 crap players are routinely fined tens of thousands of dollars for (which I don’t necessarily agree with), $100K seems surprisingly little for how unprecedented Harden’s comments were - although I’m not sure of what technical grounds the league has for fining him. If they wanted to hit him with a harsher penalty, they’d suspend him, but they can’t do that without Harden’s team (6ers, I presume) taking a massive collateral hit