Name: Where does NBA Fines money go? We followed the money to find out
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Where does NBA Fines money go? We followed the money to find out

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Apr 22, 2021 knows all too well the piercing screech of a referee’s whistle and hands quickly forming a T. He’s perennially in the top 10 in technical fouls called, and twice in the last five seasons has committed more of them than any other player.Each tech he draws comes with a $2,000 fine. Factoring in his other infractions, from verbal blasts toward refs and even a tampering charge, Green was fined $200,000 over the previous two years by the league’s front office.“I’ve been fined so many times, it doesn’t bother me one bit at this point,” said Green, whose fines the past two seasons were equal to about eight-tenths of one percent of his $25 million average annual salary.“I’ll never forget told me my rookie year — I was making, I was probably making $800,000, and in California you probably lose about 60 percent of that, and I would get frustrated with every tech, and I’ll never forget Richard Jefferson telling me, ‘Hey, don’t worry about those, you’re going to get a lot more techs in your career,’” Green said. “‘But, if you use it the right way, those techs will make you a lot more money (come contract time).’ And they have. So, since then, it’s not really something that I’m worried about, because in the grand scheme of things, it’s helped me.”While the actual fines don’t bother Green, there is something about the process that eats at him. Neither he nor many of his NBA colleagues seem to know what happens once the money leaves their possession.“We’ve never heard a single thing about it,” he said. “For years we’ve all been told, ‘Yeah, the fine money goes to charity,’ but we don’t hear anything about these charities, we don’t have any say so about these charities. Nor do you ever hear, ‘Oh your fine money went to said charity.’ Maybe that is an opportunity to build a relationship with said charity?“Honestly, in my opinion it’s just this phantom thing that we’ve heard for years. We’ve never seen the benefits of where this fine money actually goes.”Every dollar a player is fined by the NBA’s league office, for a technical foul, an ejection, a slur, a punch, a wisecrack toward a referee, and suspensions (which mean forfeited game checks) — all of it goes to charity. The players, as Green acknowledged, are generally aware of this.What happens next? The Athletic sought to find out. After a player is fined, where does the money actually go, beyond the blanket word, “charity?” Who is helped? Are there children fed, and clothed, or homes rebuilt? Are scholarships awarded?Through dozens of interviews and data-driven reporting, The Athletic found numerous, flesh-and-blood examples of people who are a little better off because the NBA docked a player’s pay. But when it came down to answering Green’s question — where, exactly, did his money go? — the system is set up specifically to prevent any tracing of an individual fine all the way to an individual charity.The reason, according to the officials inside the union who designed the system, is to avoid even a hint of impropriety. Players have charities themselves. They sit on boards. If the fines they pay for bad behavior just funnel back to the charities they oversee, at minimum, it would look bad, and soil the really good story the union has to tell about its expansive giving program.Also, the union’s previous executive director, Billy Hunter, was fired in part for his questionable management of the millions from fines that flow into the union’s coffers — for doing the very things the system is now designed to prevent.“We never want it to be that a guy comes into the (NBPA’s charitable) foundation thinking they have privilege to get more money because they were fined more,” said Sherrie Deans, who now oversees the union’s charity program. “There are guys who will never be fined that are able to access the funds.”The “system” begins with the player infraction.Fines are announced by Kiki VanDeWeghe, an NBA vice president and the league’s disciplinarian. He dinged for $50,000 in January because of Irving’s violation of the league’s COVID-19 protocol, as well as approximately $870,000 in game checks for the two contests he missed once he returned to the organization but had to self-quarantine.Last season, the Suns’ paid an NBA-high $2.2 million in fines, largely from the 25 games he was suspended for failing a drug test. The Sixers’ Joel Embiid forked over more than $416,000, and the Timberwolves’ Karl-Anthony Towns $389,000, mostly because they drew two-game suspensions for fighting each other.In 2018-19, , now of the Suns, and also the president of the players’ union, paid more than half a million in fines, including nearly $500,000 for the two games he was suspended for fighting , at the time a Los Angeles Laker.“Rondo was suspended three games for fighting Paul, which cost him $186,000.Similar to other players, Rondo has his own foundation. He typically donates about $200,000 a year of his own money to the Rajon Rondo Assisting Youth Foundation in Louisville, Ky. And the fact that he doled out almost as much in fines? “I mean, I wish we could get it dollar for dollar,” said Yvette Gentry, executive director for the foundation, explaining that she wished all the money Rondo loses in fines could be redirected to the charity.“I’m like, “Hey, how much money does that cost him? I need that,” she said.Per the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement with the players, each year’s fine money is split evenly between the league and the union. When a team owner, like Mark Cuban, or coach, like , is fined, all of that money goes to the league’s front office. When a team fines one of its players, the team keeps the money.Last season, according to data compiled through a joint effort by The Athletic and Spotrac, the NBA levied $7.3 million against its players; the season before, just $5 million.&nbsp; This season, which started a month late, there has been $5.4 million in player fines through games played March 31.Sources: Spotrac, The AthleticThe league’s share is funneled to NBA Cares, a private wing inside the league office that is not required to disclose almost anything about its spending. The league provided a list of 15 charities that received donations from NBA Cares in 2020, but declined to provide any specific amounts or timing of any donation.Athlete Ally, an advocacy charity for LGBTQ+ athletes, disclosed to The Athletic that it received $50,000 from the NBA last year. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which partners with the league each year on a number of projects, conducted a business innovation contest for college seniors at historically black colleges in 2020, with $30,000 in prize money. A spokeswoman for the NBA confirmed that the money came from fines and other revenue streams the league directs toward NBA Cares.The union’s share doesn’t usually arrive until six months after the conclusion of the previous season — in non-pandemic times, that means early January. Another batch of fine money comes in April, after arbitration hearings are concluded for the fines contested by players.To handle this money, and spend it, the union created the NBPA Foundation in 1997. It is a 501(c)3 charitable organization, which is required to disclose its yearly spending. Its current executive director, Deans, earns about $544,000 a year, according to the most recent public filing.Deans shared with The Athletic a database tracking every charitable contribution the NBPA Foundation made in 2020. It shows 217 projects worth more than $4 million. ( … Password NBAFines).“We are actively spending more every year than we bring in,” Deans said. “And we’re doing it on purpose because the need is great.”The spending is largely through a player-match program started under her watch, in which any current or former NBA player can contribute to a charity of his choice, and the foundation will match that donation, up to $25,000.Every dollar from the match program is paid out of fines. There were 40 players in ’18-19 who each accumulated at least $20,000 in fines; of that group, 22 also contributed to charity, and had those donations matched by the NBPA Foundation.Dean said there is no earmarking or tracing of any individual fine. And when fine money arrives, it is dumped into a massive, endowment-style pool of $40 million, where it is impossible to delineate between individuals, anyway.The $40 million nest egg is how the foundation spends more than it takes in. That nest egg, and the safeguards the foundation now has in place, can all be traced to Billy Hunter.When Deans walked in for her first day on the job, in 2015, she found she was suddenly sitting on $40 million.“The unfortunate part of our story is that for almost its entire first 20 years, very little of the funds were spent,” Deans said.Hunter was the union’s executive director from 1996 until his ousting in 2013. He was supposed to create a board for the NBPA Foundation, but didn’t, and Hunter essentially controlled the fine money, too.Hunter was fired by the union for a bunch of reasons, all of them outlined in the “Weiss Report,” an exhaustive analysis of all union business under Hunter’s direction. Most of the reasons had to do with his actions outside of the foundation. But, according to the report, Hunter approved a $20,000 contribution out of fine money to a charity of which he was a board member, and five other contributions, worth $33,500, to charities in Oakland, Calif., where he lived. Also, over a 10-year period, by far the largest contributions from the foundation went to the National Basketball Retired Players Association (about $2 million). None of these contributions were illegal, but could each be considered potential conflicts of interest, especially without the oversight from a board of directors.Questions over spending were coupled with one about all the money Hunter didn’t spend. There was $26.5 million in unspent fine money by June 2012, the report said, and it grew by another $13.5 million by the time Deans was installed to oversee the foundation.“We believed we had way too much time of being a dormant foundation,” Deans said.In 2020, a year of social unrest, ecological devastation and a pandemic that caused great emotional, physical and economic harm, the NBPA Foundation spread its fine money around the globe.According to the spreadsheet provided by Deans, the foundation sent $113,000 to Australia for wild-fire relief, matching a host of player donations solicited by the .The foundation matched $25,000 from the Sixers’ Embiid to the University of Pennsylvania for COVID-19 antibody treatment research.foundation, which operates a public school and student mentorship program for at-risk youths in Akron, Ohio, received a $25,000 match. ’s foundation received $15,000 to give struggling families in Maryland $1,000 each during the pandemic.“There’s poverty everywhere,” said Kirsten Bradley, program director for Operation Warm, which received $12,000 from former NBA player , and another $12,000 from the NBPA Foundation’s fine money, to distribute 795 winter coats to children in Baltimore schools.So, where did Green’s money go? Who knows?Where it might have gone, though, and what good it did —&nbsp; here are some possibilities.Jennifer Bonanno, of Baltimore, had been out of work since September 2019. Her job, which disappeared without explanation when the company’s owner seemed to have left town, was at a babysitting service, where she was paid by the assignment.Winter was coming, and Jennifer’s daughter, , a fourth grader, didn’t have a coat.“I was like, ‘Oh, my God. What am I going to do? Do I buy them food or do I buy a coat?’” Jennifer said.Mia was among the hundreds in Baltimore schools mentioned above who received a coat, via donations from the players’ foundation and Delaney.A Philadelphia charity, Helping Hand, serves youths in one of that city’s roughest neighborhoods. With deep roots in the city as a soup kitchen, since about 2005 Helping Hand has operated a youth program run by a former pro soccer player, Adam Bruckner, with huge financial support from former NBA star .The charity provides tutoring and electronics for schooling, hot meals and grief counseling. There are numerous children in the program who’ve lost family members to drugs, prisons or bullets.Helping Hand also pays tuition for college for its students who need it. The NBPA Foundation matched Korver’s $25,000 last year (Bruckner said Korver gives substantially more money than that), and out of the combined $50,000 from Korver and the players’ foundation, Bashir Howell, a 22-year-old who was among the first children in Bruckner’s and Korver’s program, was able to attend Central Penn College.“Without Helping Hand, I would have never been in college,” Howell said. “My family honestly did not have the money for me to go to college, and I called Mr. Adam and he helped me get into college. So without him I would have still been in Philadelphia, same with my friends.”The St. Bernard Project, a disaster relief outfit based in New Orleans, built 161 houses in storm-ravaged Bahamas and a group home for children with a $100,000 grant from the NBPA Foundation. An after-school basketball program in Albion, Mich., turned into a tutoring and meals program for youths in the inner city there, through a $10,000 donation. All of it came from player fines.On the NBA Cares side, Evan Robertson, a senior last year at Morgan State University, was one of the winners of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s joint business contest with the league. He used his $10,000 portion of the winnings to help pay for a move from Baltimore to Seattle, where he’ll work for Microsoft, as well as an apartment.“I just thought (fine money) went straight to the NBA and they used it to line their pockets,” said Robertson, 22. “I’m blessed in that a player was fined, because I was able to benefit from that fine. I’m sure the players don’t have much say on what happens when they give it up anyway, but thank you for being fined because now I can pay for moving expenses and give back to my community.”Athlete Ally, the advocacy and support group for LGBTQ+ athletes, which receives $50,000 annually from NBA Cares, has three areas of focus. One is education, as in the damaging impact caused by a homophobic slur by, say, of the in 2018, or more recently, Durant, in a social media spat with actor Michael Rappaport. Athlete Ally has a policy wing and measures the quantity and quality of pro-LGBTQ+ policies on college campuses. And third, it organizes support groups on those campuses.“When you look at the world of philanthropy, for every $100 that is directly contributed to causes, only 17 cents of that is earmarked toward LGBTQ+ issues,” said Hudson Taylor, Athlete Ally’s executive director. “It’s a fraction of global giving that occurs. Why is that important? A $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 fine directed to organizations working in the LGBTQ+ space is really game changing.”Remember Devean George, who spent seven of his 10 NBA seasons with the Lakers, in a career that stretched from 1999 to 2010?George used to be fearful of fines from the league office, preferring to hold onto his money. He tells the story of one game, he doesn’t remember the year, when he was a teammate of and Shaquille O’Neal, he lost his temper and picked up a technical for arguing, and then another, which earned him an ejection, and he refused to immediately leave the court.“I get to the locker room, I’m doing the math, and I was getting sick to my stomach,” George said.He was sweating a suspension (which means game checks) or further fines from the league office. None materialized but before he found that out, his Laker teammates and front-office officials played a joke on him.George was working out nervously in the weight room, awaiting word, when then-Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak summoned him.“Hey, Dev. I’m sorry, man, but you’re gonna be suspended for a week and you’re gonna miss four games,” George recalled Kupchak saying to him. “That’s gonna be four game checks. I was getting nauseous. And then I kind of look, because I was in the weight room and the guys were all kind of peeking around the corner. They started laughing and what not. I’m like, ‘That’s not funny guys.’”George now runs a nonprofit called Building Blocks, which provides affordable housing and daily mentoring programs for children in one of Minneapolis’ most dangerous neighborhoods. Last year, Building Blocks received $15,000 from the NBPA Foundation. All of it, of course, from player fines.“They always told us this goes to charity,” George said. “We all thought, ‘Yeah right.’ There was never any proof. Is there anything that shows they give this money out? I’d never heard anyone say, ‘I’m a recipient from those fines,’ and now look. I am a recipient.“I was leery back then, but I believe it now. I don’t know when they started it, but it’s true now.”The Athletic’s NBA Insider Sam Amick contributed to this story.(Photo Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photos: Getty Images)

Apr 22, 2021 knows all too well the piercing screech of a referee’s whistle and hands quickly forming a T. He’s perennially in the top 10 in technical fouls called, and twice in the last five seasons has committed more of them than any other player.Each tech he draws comes with a $2,000 fine. Factoring in his other infractions, from verbal blasts toward refs and even a tampering charge, Green was fined $200,000 over the previous two years by the league’s front office.“I’ve been fined so many times, it doesn’t bother me one bit at this point,” said Green, whose fines the past two seasons...

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Where does NBA Fines money go? We followed the money to find out

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