Daryl Morey Got Fined $50,000 For Tampering Over An Automated Tweet About James Harden

The Philadelphia 76ers are among the seemingly ever-growing list of teams that James Harden would like to be traded to, as he pushes his way out of Houston and, he hopes, to a contender somewhere.

The connection for Harden and the Sixers isn’t hard to figure out, as former Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who built Houston’s roster around Harden, is now the president of basketball operations in Philadelphia. Last week, Morey had an automated Twitter memories post go up about a post he made about the star guard passing Calvin Murphy on the Rockets all-time assists leaderboard that he quickly deleted. It, of course, became a topic of conversation and fodder online, but seemed like an innocent enough mistake.

However, the NBA didn’t see it as such, and despite it being an automated tweet the league decided Morey had violated the NBA’s tampering policy with the tweet and handed him a $50,000 fine on Monday. Ironically, that is the same amount of money Harden got fined for violating the league’s COVID-19 protocols last week after he went to a Houston club. It’s the second tampering violation punishment to be handed down by the NBA this offseason, as the Bucks lost a future second-round pick for their bungled sign-and-trade attempt for Bogdan Bogdanovic prior to free agency opening, as it appears the league is once again trying to wrap its arms around the issue of tampering, despite the near impossibility of doing so.

In any case, expect every GM in the league to be making sure they don’t have any automated tweets that could go out and land them a $50,000 fine as well.