NBA referee Bill Spooner is suing the Associated Press and sports writer John Krawczynski over defamation that was written in a tweet. Spooner has worked as a referee for 22 years and on January 24th, Krawczynski wrote a tweet that stated the referee promised a make-up call to Minnesota Timberwolves coach Kurt Ramis.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) co-founder David Filo is rumored to be buying the National Basketball Association (NBA) team New Orleans Hornets from former owner George Shinn. Filo, 44, is a New Orleans native. He is the 356th richest person in America as of right now and he wouldn’t be the only person associated with Yahoo! to own an NBA team.

Earlier this week Detroit Pistons player Charlie Villanueva sent out a tweet saying “KG [Kevin Garnett] called me a cancer patient, I’m pissed because, u know how many people died from cancer, and he’s tossing it like it’s a joke.” This tweet set off a PR backlash against Garnett and now the Boston Celtics are trying to do some crowd control. Boston Celtics coach and former NBA player Doc Rivers referred to the time that Larry Bird talked a lot of trash to him and said that it should just stay on the court.

Google TV was introduced five months ago and the company wrote a blog post today to discuss who some of their new content partners are. The new partners are Turner Broadcasting (TBS), NBC Universal, HBO, and the NBA.

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) co-founder Larry Ellison lost a bid to buy out the Golden State Warriors NBA team. The person who won ownership is Joseph Lacob, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Lacob also has part ownership in the Boston Celtics NBA team.

Milwaukee Bucks point guard basketball player Brandon Jennings was one of the best basketball players at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. After graduating high school, he played professional basketball for Lottomatica Roma in Italy. After playing for a year in Italy, Jennings was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 2009 NBA Draft. Jennings was recently fined for tweeting (posting a status message on Twitter.com) about a basketball game about 15 minutes after it ended.

According to National Basketball Association (NBA) policy, players are not allowed to tweet until after the media is finished discussing the game. Jennings was charged $7,500 as a result of the tweet he sent out after the game. Jennings tweeted “Back to 500. Yess!!! ‘500? means where doing good. Way to Play Hard Guys” shortly after the game.

Currently Jennings has about 13,659 followers on Twitter and sent out about a total of 965 tweets. His user name is YUNGBUCK3. Jennings sent out several tweets after being fined in response.  He wrote, “I understand I got fined, but 7500?  For being happy over a win, you would of thought I said something bad.  I mean it was a big win for us.”

Jennings isn’t the only one who was fined for tweeting by the NBA.  Dallas Mavericks owner and Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 for criticizing NBA referees on Twitter this past March.

Allen Iverson has become one of the most controversial players in the NBA.  In the 1996 NBA Draft, Iverson was the number one pick for the Philadelphia 76ers and he was named the NBA Rookie of the Year in that same year.  Iverson also won the All-Star MVP award in 2001 and 2005.  But his track record hasn’t been as strong as it was before.

All the awards Iverson made got to his head a little bit.  He started missing team practices during the 2002 NBA Playoffs.  At the time, the 76ers coach was Larry Brown.  At a press conference, Iverson stated “We’re sitting here, and I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we’re talking about practice.”  He then ranted about the situation further and mentioned the word “practice” about 25 times.  The video of this interview became a viral hit.

Iverson was later traded to the Denver Nuggets and then to the Detroit Pistons.  In April 2009, Iverson did not play much for the Detroit Pistons because of a back injury and Iverson said that he’d rather retire than be benched.  It was uncertain where Iverson would land next because he had not helped the Pistons win any games and his back was injured.

A couple of days ago, Iverson’s future career was made clear through a Twitter tweet.  Above is a picture of that tweet.  Iverson will now be playing for the Memphis Grizzlies.  Iverson will make $3.5 million this year when playing for the Grizzlies.

Daniel Goncalves is a guy that leaves in New Jersey that is the first to be charged with stealing a domain name and reselling it.  Goncalves stole P2P.com and sold it on eBay.  The buyer was Los Angeles Clippers basketball player Mark Madsen, who played ball at Stanford University.

Goncalves somehow got a hold of the password and shifted ownership to himself.  Then he resold the domain name on eBay to Madsen, who was unaware that the domain name was stolen.  Goncalves was arrested on Thursday for felony charges that include unlawful taking or deception, computer theft, and identity theft.  Each of the 3 counts could carry a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Police estimated that the P2P.com domain name is worth about $200,000 based on the popularity of file sharing.  Madsen paid $111,000 for the domain name.  But Marc Ostrofsky, one of the legitimate owners of the P2P.com domain name said that his company spent 30 months and $500,000 trying to get back the domain name.  They plan to file a civil lawsuit against Goncalves and his brother, Madsen, and GoDaddy.com.  Ostrofsky said that GoDaddy was slow at responding to the theft.

[via AP]