Luka Doncic Suspended For One Game After Collecting 16th Technical
5:38 pm: Doncic has officially been suspended for Monday’s game against Washington, the NBA announced (via Twitter).
7:57 am: Lakers guard Luka Doncic is once again facing a one-game suspension for reaching the season technical foul limit and this time he’s unlikely to get a reprieve, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin.
The Most Valuable Player candidate was whistled for his 16th technical foul in Friday’s 116-99 win over the Nets. It occurred in the third quarter when Doncic and Nets forward Ziaire Williams were assessed double techs following an offensive foul called on Doncic. A video review showed Doncic pushing Williams and Williams retaliating by swiping back at Doncic’s face.
Doncic continued to strengthen his MVP case as the game progressed, as he finished with 41 points.
“[Williams] was yelling in my face — three times,” Doncic said of the altercation. “I just wanted to get out of there. It’s a double tech, of course. What can I say? I didn’t even talk. I just wanted to get out of there. And they said I pushed, my push was ‘exaggerated,’ which [it] was obviously not. And I don’t know what else to tell you.”
The technicals have piled up due to Doncic’s penchant for complaining about calls and getting into scraps with opponents. Coach JJ Redick said the Lakers would appeal the latest one.
If the league denies the appeal, Doncic would miss Monday’s game against the rebuilding Wizards. That shouldn’t prevent the Lakers from collecting another victory. The Lakers beat the Wizards by 31 points when they played them on Jan. 30, McMenamin notes.
A one-game ban would cost Doncic $317K. He’s making $46MM.
The Lakers won an appeal of Doncic’s previous technical, which he picked up against Orlando last Saturday. That allowed Doncic to play against the Pistons the next game, though Detroit came away with a 113-110 win. That was one of just two losses by the Lakers over their last 16 contests.
Doncic is averaging 33.7 points, 8.2 assists and 7.8 rebounds per game through 62 outings in his first full season as a Laker.
UNC’s Caleb Wilson Declares For 2026 NBA Draft
UNC star Caleb Wilson has declared for the 2026 NBA draft, he announced on Instagram (hat tip to Lindsey Schnell of The Athletic).
Wilson, a 6’10” forward/center, is widely projected to be a top-five pick in the upcoming draft, which will occur in June.
A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Wilson appeared in 24 games as a freshman for the Tar Heels, averaging 19.8 points, 9.4 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.4 blocks in 31.3 minutes per contest while shooting 57.8% from the field and 71.3% from the free throw line. He earned numerous accolades for his efforts, including a spot on the AP All-America Second Team.
While Wilson had a stellar season with North Carolina, he missed the team’s final 10 games due to injuries. He fractured his left hand last month and had been sidelined since February 10 — he had hoped to return at some point in March before he sustained a broken right thumb, which required surgery.
The Tar Heels went 19-5 with Wilson in the lineup in 2025/26, but just 5-5 without him, ending the season on a three-game losing streak, including a first-round loss in the NCAA tournament.
Many mock drafts and big boards have Wilson at No. 4 overall in what’s viewed as an exceptionally strong class. He’s reportedly expected to be cleared for basketball activities during the pre-draft process.
Stephen Curry (Knee) To Be Reevaluated Next Week
7:50 pm: Head coach Steve Kerr acknowledged that time is running out for Curry to return this season, per Slater (Twitter link).
“We’re not bringing him back (only) for the play-in game,” head coach Steve Kerr said. “He’d need to play some games. We need to give him a runway if this is going to work. And we are running out of games.”
Moses Moody also underwent surgery on Friday to repair his torn patellar tendon, tweets Nick Friedell of The Athletic.
6:54 pm: Warriors guard Stephen Curry will be reevaluated sometime next week as he continues to deal with a right knee injury, according to Shams Charania and Anthony Slater of ESPN (Twitter link).
Golden State hosts Washington on Friday and plays at Denver on Sunday, and Curry will miss both of those contests. He has been out since January 30 due to patellofemoral pain syndrome, colloquially known as runner’s knee.
While Curry, who turned 38 years old this month, “continues to make good progress,” he still hasn’t participated in a 5-on-5 scrimmage yet, the team announced in a press release (via Twitter). That’s supposed to happen in the “coming days,” per the Warriors.
Even though he’s been out for two months — he’ll be up to 25 consecutive absences after Sunday — Curry hasn’t given up hope on potentially returning this season, sources tell ESPN (Twitter link).
Following Sunday’s contest in Denver, Golden State returns home for a five-game stretch against four playoff teams. The Warriors’ final two games will be on the road (at Sacramento on April 10 and at LAC on April 12).
The Warriors also announced injury updates on Al Horford (right soleus strain), Seth Curry (left adductor strain) and Quinten Post (right foot soreness). Horford has begun light on-court workouts but is out at least one more week, while Seth Curry and Post are considered day-to-day.
Horford and the younger Curry brother have both missed the past seven games due to their respective injuries, while second-year big man Post has been out for the past two contests.
Players’ Union Has Own Anti-Tanking Proposals
As the NBA considers implementing new rules aimed at deterring tanking prior to next season, the National Basketball Players Association has proposed a three-pronged approach to the issue, reports Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Twitter link).
The NBPA’s suggestions are as follows:
1. Flattening the draft lottery odds
The players’ union is generally in favor of the first of three lottery reform proposals that the league reportedly presented at the NBA’s Board of Governors. That proposal would expand the lottery field to 18 teams – folding in the four play-in teams who earn playoff spots – and would give the bottom 10 teams identical odds at the No. 1 overall pick.
However, the NBPA suggested some modifications to that concept, according to Fischer (Twitter link). Rather than each of the bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance to land the top pick, the players’ union would like to see those odds reduced to 7%. And instead of using descending odds for the No. 11 through No. 18 teams in the lottery, the union has proposed flat odds (including a 3.75% chance at the first overall pick) for each of those clubs.
2. Strictly enforcing meaningful tanking penalties
Reporting earlier today indicated that the NBA would like to expand its ability to enact penalties on teams who manipulate player availability and rotations in an effort to lose games. The union is in favor of that idea, Fischer reports (via Twitter), writing that key members of the NBPA are pushing for “additional penalties to punish blatant tanking.”
Fischer confirms that moving a team’s pick to the end of the lottery or the end of the first round – or even taking it away altogether – are among the more extreme measures that have been suggested. Reducing a team’s lottery odds is another potential penalty that has been floated, Fischer adds. Earlier reporting from The Athletic stated that larger fines – into the millions – have also been discussed as an anti-tanking measure.
3. Financially rewarding wins and penalizing losses
The most interesting NBPA proposal mentioned by Fischer is one that hasn’t otherwise been reported to this point. According to Fischer (Twitter link), the union has suggested that teams who perform better in the regular season should be entitled to larger shares of the NBA’s national television revenue.
This is a system used in the Premier League — Philip Buckingham of The Athletic provides an explainer on how these “merit payments” work in Europe’s top soccer league, where top clubs like Liverpool and Arsenal received exponentially higher distributions last season than last-place finishers Southampton.
That sort of change would be far more significant than just altering the draft lottery rules. It would also conflict with the NBA’s current rules related to revenue sharing, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s not a concept we’ve heard the league advocate for to this point. It sounds like a longer shot than the other two aspects of the NBPA’s plan.
NBA Seeking More Punitive Anti-Tanking Penalties
In addition to planning to reform the draft lottery in an effort to deter teams from tanking, the NBA is also interested in expanding its ability to penalize teams who manipulate player availability and rotations in an effort to lose, reports Joe Vardon of The Athletic.
The Jazz were fined $500K in February for what the NBA deemed “conduct detrimental to the league” after they sat star forwards Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarters of consecutive games.
Under the proposed policy changes, the NBA would have the latitude to increase those fines into the millions of dollars, Vardon writes, as well as either moving a team’s draft pick to the end of the lottery or the end of the first round — or taking it away entirely.
The NBA is considering implementing one of three lottery reform proposals presented to its Board of Governors at this week’s meetings, but apparently recognizes that none of those concepts would entirely eradicate tanking on its own. It sounds as if the goal would be to implement more punitive penalties for tanking in concert with those changes to the lottery.
“Without stricter penalties, you could still have crazy behavior,” one league source told The Athletic. “You have to have something in place that is so drastic, a team would actually think twice about tanking. And if a team tries it and gets caught, then the other teams need to see the penalties and realize it isn’t worth it to try.”
This proposal is short on details for now, but presumably the NBA would like to implement an anti-tanking policy along the lines of its player participation policy, which lays out specific guidelines and calls for increasingly harsher penalties for teams who repeatedly violate those guidelines. In other words, any anti-tanking policy would likely start with fines before rising to the level of draft pick devaluation or forfeiture.
The NBA’s Board of Governors is scheduled to meet again in May to discuss and vote on the issue.
NBA Presented Three Anti-Tanking Proposals To Board Of Governors
During this week’s Board of Governors meetings, the NBA presented team owners with three proposals aimed at discouraging tanking, reports ESPN’s Shams Charania.
According to Charania, the expectation is that those concepts may undergo some tweaks and then will be the subject of a vote in May in order to determine what changes the league makes ahead of the 2026/27 season.
The three proposed ideas are as follows:
Proposal No. 1:
- The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 18, adding the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
- The draft odds would be flattened for the bottom 10 teams, giving them each an 8% chance at the No. 1 overall pick.
- The remaining 20% odds for the top pick would be spread out in descending order among the remaining eight teams; within that group, the worst team (ie. the 11th-worst overall) would have the most favorable odds.
- All 18 picks would be drawn via lottery.
Proposal No. 2:
- The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 22, incorporating non-playoff teams and the teams eliminated from the playoffs in the first round.
- Teams’ lottery odds would be determined based on their records over the previous two seasons. For instance, a team that won 45 games one year and 25 the next would be slotted in the lottery as a 35-win team.
- A minimum win floor would be implemented. If the floor were to be set at 20 wins, for example, a team that went 15-67 in a season would be considered to have gone 20-62 for lottery purposes.
- The top four spots would be drawn via lottery, like the current system.
Proposal No. 3:
- The draft lottery would expand from 14 teams to 18, adding the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
- The bottom five teams would each have the same odds for the No. 1 pick, with each team’s odds descending from there (starting with the sixth-worst team).
- The top five spots would be drawn via lottery.
- After the top five picks are determined, there would be a separate lottery for the remaining 13 teams.
- A bottom-five team would be prohibited from falling past 10th in the draft order.
Some aspects of the proposals, as outlined by Charania, may require some clarification. For instance, he describes the 22 teams involved in proposal No. 2 as “the bottom 10 teams that miss the play-in tournament, the eight that qualify for it and the four playoff teams that lose in the first round.” But that doesn’t account for the fact that one or more play-in teams could advance beyond the first round, eliminating a top-two seed.
According to Charania, team owners and front offices are expected to discuss the ideas in greater depth over the next few weeks in order to better understand what exactly these changes might look like and what unintended consequences might arise. The NBA is prepared to maintain an open dialogue with executives around the league in order to potentially modify each proposal before a vote in May.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly vowed to address the issue of tanking, which has been especially noticeable this season ahead of a loaded 2026 draft. Silver said three weeks ago that “substantial changes” would be coming in an effort to deter tanking. At a press conference this Wednesday, he stated, “We are going to fix it … full stop.”
Bulls Rule Out Jaden Ivey, Jalen Smith For Rest Of Season
Bulls guard Jaden Ivey and big man Jalen Smith will miss the rest of the 2025/26 season, the team announced on Thursday (via Twitter).
Ivey, who was acquired from Detroit at the trade deadline, appeared in just four games for Chicago before being shut down due to left knee pain. There had initially been hope that he’d return to action this season, but the team says he’ll continue his rehabilitation work and won’t play again this spring.
Smith, meanwhile, has missed seven of the Bulls’ 14 games since February 24 due to a right calf issue. According to the club, he aggravated that injury in Wednesday’s loss to Philadelphia and will be held out for the final two-and-a-half weeks of the season in order to fully recover.
The fact that Ivey spent so little time on the court following the deadline deal sending him to Chicago clouds his future to some extent. The Bulls will have to decide this June whether or not to issue him a qualifying offer worth $8.77MM in order to make him a restricted free agent. Even if the team puts that QO on the table, the next step would be figuring out if a multiyear contract agreement between the two sides is viable.
Before making either decision, the Bulls will want to ensure they have a clear and complete understanding of Ivey’s knee issue in order to assess the likelihood that the former fifth overall pick will be able to recapture his old form. Ivey was having a career year for the Pistons in 2024/25, averaging 17.6 points and 4.0 assists per game with a .460/.409/.733 shooting line, before he suffered a broken fibula in his left leg that ended his season. His return in the fall was delayed after he underwent an arthroscopic procedure on his right knee.
Ivey lacked his usual explosiveness in 37 games for Detroit and Chicago this season, registering averages of 8.5 PPG and 1.8 APG on .445/.373/.809 shooting in a reduced role (18.1 MPG). He spoke last month about not feeling like “the same player I used to be.”
Smith’s calf issues appear unlikely to be a long-term concern. He’ll earn $9.43MM next season in the final season of the three-year, $27MM contract he signed with the Bulls as a free agent during the 2024 offseason.
Nick Richards and Guerschon Yabusele figure to play increased frontcourt roles in the short term with Smith sidelined. The Bulls have no shortage of options in the backcourt, where Josh Giddey, Tre Jones, Collin Sexton, and Rob Dillingham have all been playing regular minutes as of late.
Grizzlies, Pelicans Eliminated From Playoffs; Warriors Locked Into Top-10 Seed
With the Grizzlies‘ 123-98 loss to the Spurs tonight, Memphis has officially been eliminated from playoff contention, while the Warriors have been locked into a top-10 seed. The Pelicans had their playoff possibilities officially extinguished by virtue of their 121-116 loss to the Knicks on Tuesday.
That means that the top 10 teams in the West, and therefore the playoff/play-in pool, have been finalized: the Thunder, Spurs, Lakers, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Rockets, Suns, Clippers, Trail Blazers, and Warriors will all be participating in the postseason, though there is still plenty of room for the seeding to change over the last few weeks of the season.
Wednesday night was a big night for the Western Conference playoff race, as the Nuggets, Rockets, Warriors, Clippers, Blazers, and Lakers were all in action. Coming into the night, three games separated the No. 6 Rockets from the No. 3 Lakers, and the No. 10 Warriors were just two games behind the No. 8 Clippers.
While no team is likely to catch the Spurs in second place, San Antonio is just two games behind the top-seeded Thunder, who had their 12-game winning streak snapped on Wednesday.
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson spoke about the team clinching home court advantage in the first round tonight. “I would expect it to be loud with a lot of excitement, enthusiasm,” he said, per Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio Express-News (Twitter link). “But it’s still a little bit away, so hopefully we can continue to get better and make some improvements in a lot of areas.”
On the other end of the postseason picture, the Warriors technically haven’t been eliminated from contention for a top-six seed, but they trail No. 6 Houston by 8.5 games and both teams have just nine left to play, so that will likely happen at some point in the coming days.
NBPA To Seek Change To 65-Game Rule
The National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) is working to put forward a change to the league’s 65-game awards-eligibility rule, reports Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic, citing an anonymous source within the players’ union.
The NBPA would like to introduce stipulations related to significant injuries and reevaluate the games-played criteria, Vorkunov writes, adding that the union intends to present its proposal to the league within the next few weeks.
The NBPA previously put out a statement calling for the rule to be either abolished or reformed, citing the looming potential ineligibility of Cade Cunningham, who has had an All-NBA season but currently sits at 60 games played with 20 or more minutes.
League commissioner Adam Silver, however, told reporters today that he believes the rule has been a success and is working as intended, seemingly resisting the call for changes to be made.
“We always knew when there’s a line you draw, that somebody’s going to fall on the other side of that line,” Silver said. “And it may feel unfair in that particular instance. Let’s see what happens at the end of this year… we also have to remember that to the extent that one player is no longer eligible, some other player will then be All-NBA and will slot into that spot. So I’m not ready to stand here saying I don’t think it’s working. I think it is working.”
Vorkunov notes that the rule has come under scrutiny for potentially pressuring players to return too quickly from injuries so as not to lose out on contract incentives based on end-of-year awards.
“There’s not nearly as much discussion around load management as there was, in part because the teams and the players have responded. You see them on the floor now,” Silver said. “So, now we have a separate issue that we’re dealing with in terms of tanking, and we’ll deal with that. And I get it. There’s part of my job. There’s always new issues, but I’m not ready to say, standing here today, that because there may be a sense of unfairness for one player, that means the rule doesn’t work.”
Sixers’ Joel Embiid, Paul George Return On Wednesday
Star center Joel Embiid will officially return to action for the Sixers in tonight’s game against the Bulls, Derek Bodner of PHLY Sports notes (Twitter link).
Embiid was upgraded to questionable on Tuesday as he worked his way back from an oblique strain that has kept him sidelined since late February. Paul George is also set to return after serving his 25-game suspension for violating the league’s anti-drug policy.
Philadelphia has struggled to find its rhythm with both George and Embiid in the lineup this season, going just 10-9, but the team still has 10 games left before the postseason to try to find its footing. The Sixers are currently in seventh place in the Eastern Conference with a record of 39-33, trailing the No. 5 Raptors by a game-and-a-half.
Earning a top-six seed and not having to participate in any play-in games would likely be beneficial to the Sixers’ hopes of advancing beyond the first round.