Amar’e Stoudemire tried to make peace in Milan. (Getty Images)Well, this isn’t an especially auspicious start to the offseason for Amar’e Stoudemire.

According to Newsday’s Al Iannazzone, the NBA “will be reviewing” an incident in which Stoudemire sent a direct message on Twitter containing a gay slur to a fan who’d told the New York Knicks star that he needs to “come back a lot stronger and quicker” next season to make up for a disappointing 2011-12 campaign.

The private insult — for those unfamiliar with Twitter’s messaging system, direct messages are only visible to their recipients, and not to the wide-open Internet audience — soon became public. The fan, whose Twitter handle is @BFerrelli, took a screen capture of the derogatory direct message and tweeted it out for the world to see. News of the slight quickly spread as the screencap made its way around Twitter, and blogs like Busted Coverage, Deadspin and Black Sports Online picked up on the scent. Stoudemire eventually sent the fan a second direct message to “apologize for what [he] said earlier,” which was accepted.

Despite that happy ending, though, an NBA spokesman told Newsday’s Iannazzone and Marc Berman of the New York Post that the commissioner’s office is expected to review the exchange, including the “authenticity” of the profane message, with an eye toward potentially disciplining Stoudemire for the remarks. You’d have to imagine that the league’s “investigation” will be pretty brief, considering Stoudemire — who traveled to Milan on Saturday to attend the runway unveiling of Calvin Klein’s 2013 spring line on Sunday — hasn’t disputed sending either the slur or the follow-up apology, that a “source close to Stoudemire confirmed” to Newsday’s Iannazzone “that it was Stoudemire who sent both direct messages,” and that Stoudemire’s agent, Happy Walters, referred the New York Daily News to Amar’e's Twitter apology when contacted for comment.

There doesn’t seem to be any denial of the attack or pleading not guilty

This article originally appeared on: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/amar-e-stoudemire-tweets-gay-slur-carping-knicks-164712034--nba.html