NBA offered to waive Toronto Raptors fine for tampering

The Toronto Raptors were recently fined for comments made by Drake at a concert in Toronto in reference to the possibility of star forward Kevin Durant defecting from Oklahoma City next summer in favor of the Raptors.

Now it appears that the NBA was willing to waive that fine if the Raptors disassociated themselves from Drake, per the Toronto Globe and Mail. The Raptors reportedly refused that offer, which only makes a murky situation less clear.

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The article details the mess as such:

"This has risen beyond the level of a spat. It’s an executive knife fight. Raptors officials would not comment on the Drake versus NBA situation. They are plainly loath to make their secret war public.They also refused to address a key detail – that the NBA offered to drop the tampering fine if the team agreed to strip Drake of his title. The Raptors apparently refused."

While $25,000 isn’t much to a professional sports team, it seemed to be more about the message behind the punishment. Tampering has been rampant in the NBA given how much is at stake when superstars become free agents. Drake likely wasn’t sent on some mission from MLSE to recruit Durant, but given his affiliation with the team and the transparent nature of his message, it was a slam dunk fine.

Unfortunately, Toronto media doesn’t agree and instead chose to use this incident as another in a long line of grievances the city holds in order to support an inferiority complex, which isn’t completely unfounded. Toronto has always struggled to attract big name free agents, despite being one of the largest cities in North America. Now they’re one of the only teams being fined for tampering and even the NBA seems to think that might have gone too far.

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