The American National Basketball Association (NBA) has fined professional basketball player LaMelo Ball (23) a maximum of $100,000. This was preceded by an anti-gay choice of words by the 23-year-old Charlotte Hornets player, which the league did not want to tolerate.
„Not homo“
On Saturday, Ball led the Charlotte Hornets to a 115-114 home win against the Bucks, scoring 26 points, nine rebounds and six assists. After his team’s narrow victory, Ball explained in a TV interview: “We closed everything down – totally non-gay. That’s what we wanted: put a hand up and then live with the results.”
The youth term “no homo” developed in Harlem in the 1990s and is intended to convey to the conversation partner that something previously said happened without homosexual intentions. From the hip-hop scene to US rappers, the term finally made it into the slang language of US youth. In the USA, the phrase is seen as synonymous with homophobia and discriminatory condescension, such as “faggot” or “faggot”.
Professional basketball player’s regrets
The NBA at least didn’t let Ball’s behavior pass, Ball had used a clearly “insulting and derogatory” expression, which is why the organization imposed the maximum penalty on the professional player. Ball himself said the next day in the wake of the defeat against the Cleveland Cavaliers: ” Before we start, I want to talk about my comment yesterday. I didn’t mean anything by it and I don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t discriminate,” he said.
Players have already been punished several times for using “no homo”: Jamaican basketball player Roy Hibbert had to pay a fine of $75,000 for this in 2013. Most recently, the NBA imposed a fine of $40,000 on Cam Thomas of the Brooklyn Nets and a fine of $25,000 on Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets – here, too, the professionals had used the homophobic term in interviews in both cases . Start of form End of form
