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NBA Fines Joakim Noah $50,000 for ‘F**got’ Comment to Fan

*Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah was fined $50,000 on Monday for directing an anti-gay slur at a fan during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals in Miami and vowed to learn from the incident.

The NBA released its decision hours after speaking with Noah, saying the fine was “for using a derogatory and offensive term from the bench.”

The fine is only half of what Los Angeles Lakers’ star Kobe Bryant was assessed for shouting the same slur toward a referee last month, and the league said the discrepancy was because the sanction against Bryant was based on both what he said – and who he said it to.

“Kobe’s fine included discipline for verbal abuse of a game official,” NBA spokesman Mark Broussard said.

Noah and NBA officials met Monday morning. Noah said he emerged from that talk prepared to “pay the price” for what happened when he returned to the bench with two fouls midway through the first quarter of Sunday night’s game against the Miami Heat.

That price turned out to be 1.6 percent of his roughly $3.1 million salary this season. Noah agreed to an extension last year, worth about $60 million through the 2015-16 season.

Meanwhile, two major advocacy groups quickly called upon the league to both sanction Noah and help further educate players on the topic.