Matt Barnes, a notorious hothead, has landed in hot water quite a number of times during his playing days. The former forward’s behavior had cost him nearly $420,000 in fines during his 14-year career. In a clip that has gone viral on Instagram over the past few days, Barnes can be seen attempting to guess how much he was fined for certain transgressions back in the day.
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Barnes seemed to be amused reminiscing over his best or worst (depending on how you see it) hits. And he claimed that he got his “money’s worth” for one particular incident.
On November 14, 2013, Barnes’ LA Clippers were playing against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Late in the second quarter, Barnes was ejected along with OKC’s Serge Ibaka following an incident.
Ibaka and Blake Griffin got tangled up when the Clippers forward was trying to put up a shot. It looked like Ibaka had pushed Griffin. And Barnes shoved Ibaka hard on the chest in retaliation. Ibaka cocked his right fist as if to throw a punch while Barnes continued jawing with him. Players from both teams had to step in to separate the two.
Barnes was promptly ejected by the refs. But it was not the sending off that made the moment infamous. It was the tweet that Barnes had made as he sat in the locker room after being kicked out.
The tweet, which has since been deleted, read:
“I love my teammates like family, but I’m DONE standing up for these n—as! All this s— does is cost me money.…”
According to the official log, Barnes’ fine was for “failure to leave the court in a timely manner after being ejected from LAC-OKC game and inappropriate language via Twitter account”.
When recalling the incident on the All the Smoke Instagram page, Barnes estimated that he was fined nearly $45,000 for his actions: the ejection, not leaving the court in a timely manner, and the tweet that he put out. When the interviewer told him that he was fined only $25,000 for it, he laughed.
“That was the Serge Ibaka sh*t in LA. Got kicked out the game and then I said.. that was probably 25 for the ejection, maybe 15 for not leaving in a timely fashion plus the inappropriate language was a total maybe 40-45? (25,000) total? Oh, I got my money’s worth on that one,” said Barnes.
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Barnes’ fiery temperament made him one of the most fined players in NBA history.
Matt’s long list of fines
Barnes incurred a total of 47 separate fines and was suspended five different times during his career. He’s paid $414,276 in fines.
Some of his more infamous incidents include the one when he tried to forcibly enter the Milwaukee Bucks’ locker room after he was ejected from the game. He was trying to get into a physical altercation with forward John Henson. He was fined $5,000 for the flagrant fouls and ejection during the game, and a whopping $32,205 for his attempt to enter the locker room. He also received a one-game suspension.
However, that was not the largest fine he was slapped with. That came after an incident during the Clippers’ game with the Houston Rockets in 2015. The forward made derogatory comments toward James Harden’s mother and was fined $50,000. He has since apologized, and the two players have made their peace.
