New York—Brooklyn Nets coach Kenny Atkinson was fined $25,000 by the NBA on Saturday for verbal abuse of referees and not promptly leaving the court after ejection, the league announced.
Atkinson received a technical foul and was ejected with 69 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Brooklyn’s 114-106 loss to the visiting Indiana Pacers on Friday.
Atkinson unleashed a profanity-filled rant at referee Tony Brothers, unhappy at a non-call of what he felt was a foul on Indiana’s Myles Turner as well as a Nets foul on Latvian forward Rodions Kurucs.
The loss snapped a seven-game win streak for the Nets, who at 15-19 rank 10th in the Eastern Conference.
Atkinson, 51, played in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands as a guard from 1990-2004. After assistant coach stints with New York and Atlanta, he was named coach of the Nets in 2016 and guided Brooklyn to records of 20-62 and 28-54 in his first two campaigns as an NBA coach.
