It doesn’t matter if you’re a prospective condo tenant, Courtney Love or a sportswriter: Be careful what you tweet, or you might get sued.

In an unprecedented legal move in the sporting world, veteran NBA referee Bill Spooner has sued Associated Press sportswriter Jon Krawczynski for defamation, after the Minnesota Timberwolves beat writer tweeted during a Jan. 24 game that Spooner was calling fouls to make up for bad calls.

During the second quarter of this particular game, which the Timberwolves lost at home to the Houston Rockets, 129-125, Minnesota coach Kurt Rambis was complaining to Spooner, who’s been in the league for 22 seasons, about what he deemed to be an unfair foul call against one of his players.

Spooner said he’d review the call at halftime — a “customary practice,” (.pdf) according to the lawsuit.

But that wasn’t good enough for Rambis, who wanted to know how he was supposed to get those points back. (The foul call resulted in two free throws for the Rockets.) Spooner says he didn’t respond to Rambis, but Krawczynski evidently heard differently and then tweeted this during the third quarter after the supposed “make-up” call:

For that, Spooner filed a lawsuit yesterday (on his own behalf) in U.S. district court in Minneapolis, seeking more than $75,000 in damages, an official retraction from the AP and the deletion of the tweet. Furthermore, the suit contends that Krawczynski’s tweet “was sent on an improper motive” and that it was “derogatory of [Spooner's] integrity and honesty, which are essential to the performance of his profession.”

Sure, it’s something that’s never been tried before — an all-too-common occurrence in this emerging digital age — but will this suit ever see a courtroom? It’s unlikely that the image-conscious NBA wouldn’t step in at some point, since the league is extremely sensitive about the public perception of its refs after the Tim Donaghy gambling debacle from four years ago.

Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP, said in a statement, “We believe all of the facts we reported from the game in question were accurate.”

That, of course, is a large part of the $75,000 question here: Does in-game tweeting constitute AP reporting? And was Krawczynski’s tweet reckless and malicious? Everyone has their opinion, but if this case does go to trial, a judge might actually decide that.

UPDATE (5:25 pm): The NBA has just released a statement:

“We investigated the content of the tweet when it appeared, found it to be without substance, and informed Mr. Spooner that we considered the matter closed. We subsequently advised Mr. Spooner’s lawyer that we did not think suing a journalist over an incorrect tweet would be productive. Nevertheless, Mr. Spooner and his lawyer decided to commence this litigation and any future inquiries should be directed to Mr. Spooner’s lawyer.”

[h/t to A Wolf Among Wolves for the video]