It was bound to happen — David Stern is a stickler for his rules.
One of his rules was team officials cannot even talk about players during the lockout. (Go look at NBA.com and try to find a picture of a current player.) Now two teams have gotten their wrist slapped for this, tweeted Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
That would be Timberwolves GM David Kahn, who in his press conference about finally getting around to firing coach Kurt Rambis he mentioned both Ricky Rubio and Brad Miller.
As for the other, smart money is on Dallas coach Rick Carlisle, who as we told you before mentioned several Blazers players by name while doing a radio interview in Portland. The best part of the interview is the way he cuts and runs at the end, when pretty clearly a team PR guy was telling him to shut up.
Frankly, the rule is pretty silly. But if the rule is there so that Stern can provide a united front with himself as the only mouthpiece for the league, then he cannot let these infractions slide by. While the league has threatened a $1 million fine for violations, it doesn’t seem likely that these harmless ones will generate that severe a response. But there will be fines.