Twenty-Five grand for threatening a man’s life? Surprisingly not enough.“I promise you, you think I’m playing? I swear to God, I’ll f— you up, you and your wife, I’ll f—  you up!” It is unclear what sparked this comment from former MVP winner Russell Westbrook, but what is clear is that he was fined 25,000$. But is that enough considering his salary is $35,665,000 a year? Players and owners are often given enormous fines when compared to the average person, but “they have so much money, it’s chump change to them.”

The Thunder vs Jazz game was not only eventful for Russell Westbrook, but also for the fan involved. Westbrook claims that the fan, Shane Keisel, yelled “Get down on your knees like you used to.” Keisel refuted the claim stating that he only told Westbrook to “Sit down and ice your knees.”

Upon further inspection the fan’s twitter account held numerous racist comments, including a comment in 2018 where he stated that “Westbrook needs to go back where he came from.” The Jazz promptly banned Keiser for life.

While it can be argued that Westbrook’s comments were a justified response, this does not change the fact that he has numerous fans, many of them children, who viewed this incident unfold. Russell Westbrook was fined $25,000 by the NBA but for a man who makes $35,665,000 a year, a $25,000 fine is .007% of his annual check. As senior Hugh Wells states, “They should feel strong on them because their reputation is on the line.” The fine is normally not enough to stop the issue from happening again because the athlete already knows the consequences, and decides it is equal to the action.

Russell Westbrook is not the only NBA athlete to receive to minimal fines. In February of 2018, Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban was fined $600,000 for misconduct. The misconduct fine was for stating ,”This was, like, a year-and-a-half tanking.” Tanking is strictly prohibited by the NBA. As one can imagine, paying lots of money for game tickets only to watch a team  intentionally lose is anything but fun.

Fines like this typically don’t work because of the minimal amount being issued.. If fines were working you would see less and less players/owners committing them but instead there are  still a lot of players/owners committing them. I feel that if a players commits a crime and needs to be fined the fine should be a percentage of their salary, the minimal fines are just not enough.