Pat Garofalo, Minnesota State Representative, Apologizes For Dumb Tweet About the NBA and Crime

Pat Garofalo, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, offered up one of the dumber political/sports tweets Sunday night when he wrote: “Let’s be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference w/ possible exception of increase in streetcrime.” The tweet made its way around the Internet on Sunday and Monday. Intentionally Garofalo tried to play down this intentions of his tweet.

He eventually issued a full-on apology through the Minnesota House of Representatives website:

"“In the last 24 hours, I’ve had the opportunity to re-learn one of life’s lessons: whenever any of us are offering opinions, it is best to refer to people as individuals as opposed to groups. Last night, I publicly commented on the NBA and I sincerely apologize to those who I unfairly categorized. The NBA has many examples of players and owners who are role models for our communities and for our country. Those individuals did not deserve that criticism and I apologize. In addition, it’s been brought to my attention that I was mistaken and the NBA policy on drug enforcement is stronger than I previously believed.  Again, I offer my sincere apologies for my comments,” stated Rep. Garofalo."

Let this serve as another reminder that sports and politics probably shouldn’t mix, especially on Twitter. In fact, maybe we should all stick to tweeting what we ate for lunch to play it safe.