While the NFL players are planning on bringing the NFL owners to court, there is now precedent for an NBA referee to bring a reporter to court as well.
In January, during a game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Houston Rockets, Associated Press reporter Jon Krawczynski said on Twitter that official Bill Spooner promised a visibly and vocally upset coach Kurt Rambis that he would review a questionable call at halftime, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal reports.
“Ref Bill Spooner told Rambis he’d ‘get it back’ after a bad call,” Krawczynski tweeted. “Then he made an even worse call on Rockets. That’s NBA officiating folks.”
The suit is seeking $75,000 in damages for Spooner, including unpublishing and retracting the statement on the grounds the published comment was a “defamatory accusation.”
“We believe all of the facts we reported from the game in question were accurate,” AP associate general counsel Dave Tomlin said in a statement.
