Los Angeles Lakers Fined $500,000 For Tampering With Paul George

Yesterday, the NBA announced that it concluded that Los Angeles Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka was guilty of tampering, as he had a conversation with Aaron Mintz, agent of Paul George, that “constituted a prohibited expression of interest in the player while he was under contract.”

This, of course, came after the Lakers received a warning about tampering when President of Basketball Operations Magic Johnson joked about privately courting George on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show- when asked if he was trying to recruit George to come to Los Angeles, he jokingly suggested that when he sees him, he can’t say “come to the Lakers”, but “I’ll be winking… you know what that means, right?”

The Lakers were promptly fined $500,000- a slap on the wrist, and a meaningless penalty in the grand scheme of things. But here’s the problem- in the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, here is what the penalty is supposed to be for tampering, per basketball.realgm.com:

“The prohibition of the Member employing or otherwise affiliated with the offending person from hiring the Player tampered with for a definite or indefinite period; the forfeiture of Draft picks held by the Member employing or otherwise affiliated with the offending person or the transfer of such Draft picks to the aggrieved Member; and/or the imposition of a fine upon the offending person and/or the Member employing or otherwise affiliated with such offending person in an amount not to exceed $5,000,000.”

In English, these are the three forms of penalization the Commissioner can employ- not allowing the player (in this case, Paul George) to play for the tampering team (the Lakers) for some period of time, forfeiture of draft picks, and a fine of up to $5M.

So, why did the Lakers simply get a $500,000 fine?

Is a slap of the wrist even worth it when it’s such a minimal cost for the guilty party?

If another opportunity arises for Johnson and Pelinka to tamper, are they really going to look back at this and say, “gee, we better make sure not to tamper”?

No, they won’t.

Ultimately, it’s the call of the NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver. None of the aforementioned forms of discipline are required, although they are the suggested way of going about this type of situation. Maybe they really couldn’t find anything truly important, and thought there weren’t any major transgressions.

But when one of the two highest-ranking executives of a team does something warranting a warning about tampering, isn’t that when the slap on the wrist is supposed to come? Why does it take a second offense for the NBA to step in and give an extremely minor penalty? Isn’t this when the NBA steps in and does something notable enough to get the attention of the Lakers and other teams, to try to prevent this type of thing from occurring at a later date?

Again, it’s very possible that the NBA couldn’t find truly conclusive evidence that anything major was going on here- but when the two people running an organization are suspected of doing the same thing, it doesn't seem coincidental by any means.

And if they really did find damning evidence of shady stuff going down- which seems likely- and still didn’t do anything, after already issuing the team a warning- the basketball world should be outraged.