Nikola Jokic Fined For Making Stupid Joke From 2012

The Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic has been fined $25,000 for using the phrase “no homo” while discussing Wendell Carter, Jr.’s length, as NBA writer Sean Highkin reports.

“He’s lon—huh, no homo, he’s longer than you expect,” said the Serbian center after last Wednesday’s game, which you can see here:

On the one hand, it’s healthy for a professional sports league to come down hard on even faintly homophobic remarks. On the other hand, if he’d just used the more-palatable “pause” to have some fun with his heterosexual fragility, he’d probably be in the clear. Slang percolates to non-native speakers more slowly, one imagines.