Matt Barnes earns $50k fine for the trash-talking situation with James Harden’s mom

Let’s start from the beginning. On Wednesday, the Rockets beat the Clippers. James Harden’s mother, Monja Willis, was at the game. Irascible Clippers forward Matt Barnes was on the floor. One thing lead to another and ...

That’s two people catching wind of the same conversation word-for-word. Not great! The next morning, TMZ heard from Willis that Barnes had apologized to her ... but she would not confirm for what:

James Harden’s mother tells TMZ Sports ... Matt Barnes PERSONALLY APOLOGIZED Wednesday night ... after the L.A. Clippers star hurled an extremely rude comment to her during last night’s NBA playoff game.

Monja Willis wouldn’t tell us exactly what Barnes said to her at the Toyota Center in Houston during Game 2 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals ... saying, “We’ll leave that on the court.”

Rockets coach Kevin McHale wasn’t accepting that apology secondhand:

“You don’t say anything to anybody’s mom,” McHale, himself a trash-talker when he played for the Boston Celtics in the 1980s, said Thursday at the team’s hotel in Marina del Rey. “If you have something to say, say it to the guy you’re playing against.”

Meanwhile ... Barnes continued throwing jabs off the court:

Reporters finally had a chance to speak with Barnes Friday before Game 3, and here’s what he had to say:

Naturally, Barnes has been fined several times before, and he expected be hit again by the NBA:

Indeed, the NBA announced a $50,000 fine for Barnes on Friday evening for using inappropriate language

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SB Nation presents: As the NBA playoffs intensify, so do the fights