NEW YORK — The NBA fined Jusuf Nurkic of the Portland Trail Blazers $40,000 on Tuesday for confronting a fan at a game in Indiana and throwing the person's cellphone. NBA president of league operations Byron Spruell announced the penalty.
The incident happened shortly after Sunday's game between the Blazers and the Pacers at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Nurkic approached the fan, walked within a few inches of the person, grabbed the person's cellphone and tossed it into nearby seats.
It was not clear what preceded the incident, which lasted only a few seconds. A security guard walked between Nurkic and the fan after the phone was tossed, at which point the Blazers' center walked away.
Yahoo Sports tweeted a video of the confrontation, although neither Nurkic nor the fan are audible:
Reporter Chris Haynes of Yahoo tweeted on Tuesday that the fan had heckled Nurkic leading up to the confrontation and insulted members of his family, citing unnamed league sources.
Indiana won the game 129-98. Nurkic, whose nickname is "the Bosnian Beast," did not play. He has not played since mid-February because of left foot plantar fasciitis.
Nurk is one of several Blazers players to be sidelined in recent weeks, and the team announced on Monday that star point guard Damian Lillard would miss the rest of the current season while he continues recovering from surgery to repair a longstanding abdominal injury.
Sunday's game was one of a series of recent losses for the Blazers, but the team broke the streak on Monday with a 119-115 win over the Detroit Pistons.
