Last weekend Jennings tweeted 15 minutes after the Bucks game against the Trailblazers ended. That's a big no-no in the NBA, as the league's social media policy spells out that players aren't allowed to tweet post-game until the team has finished talking to the media. The cost for Jennings' Twitter hiccup? A hefty $7,500.
The tweet in question is rather benign. It reads, "Back to 500. Yess!!! '500' means where doing good. Way to Play Hard Guys."
But that's clearly not the point. Jennings broke an established rule, and the NBA needs to follow through with the fine in order to set a precedent and make a statement to other players who are all a-Twitter.
Of course Jennings was none to happy about the sizable fine, and he turned to Twitter to voice his malcontent about the price of his preemptive tweet. "I understand I got fined, but 7500? For being happy over a win, you would of thought I said something bad. I mean it was a big win for us."
He later apologized for the behavior, said it wouldn't happen again, and even talked about deleting his Twitter account. Given that he deleted his original account after a YouTube incident earlier in the year, and then took to his Facebook Page to share with his fans that he had a new account, we have a feeling that Jennings will stick around on Twitter for a while longer.
Now that we've seen a plethora of athletes penalized for their poor Twitter behavior — Antonio Cromartie, Larry Johnson and members of the Texas Tech football team — these occurrences are starting to become commonplace. So who will be the next athlete to say too much on Twitter? Who knows, but we do expect some Twitter sparks to fly this weekend when the Chargers and the Bengals (Ochocinco's team) face each other on the field in San Diego.
[via SI.com]