The NBA announced that Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic’s technical foul at 7:40 of the fourth quarter on Tuesday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder has been rescinded upon league office review.
That puts Doncic at 13 technical fouls on the season, and getting to 16 would result in a one-game suspension.
This technical being rescinded doesn’t come as a huge surprise considering Doncic was yelling something at a heckling fan and referee J.T. Orr mistakenly thought it was aimed at him. Doncic confirmed after the game that was indeed the case.
“Yeah. I mean, you could see it as it happened,” Doncic said. “But I’ve never gotten a fan ejected, never, but if he’s gonna talk, I’m gonna talk back like always. That had nothing to do with the refs, so I didn’t really understand.”
While it is nice the see the NBA admit its mistake and rescind the technical, it unfortunately will not impact the result of the game with the Lakers going on to fall to the Thunder after Doncic was ejected. L.A. led by one point at the time and Oklahoma City closed the game on a 29-12 run.
Doncic had to watch that unfold from the locker room and even though the technical was a mistake on the referee’s part, he still took accountability for putting himself in that position.
“I mean, it was tough. We were right there. I think we fought the whole game, we were down at halftime and came back in the third quarter. We were fighting, so it was tough to see that this kind of situation happened. And that’s on me too, so I feel like I let my team down,” Doncic said postgame.
The Lakers are fighting for the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference and that loss could end up costing them. While the way things unfolded wasn’t right, Doncic could still use it as a learning experience to avoid it happening again.
Jarred Vanderbilt felt Luka Doncic technical fouls were ‘personal’
The reason Luka Doncic got ejected was because it was his second technical with him also picking up one in the third quarter. That was issued by the same referee J.T. Orr when Doncic was arguing that Jarred Vanderbilt got hit on the head on a layup. After the game, Vanderbilt revealed what Orr said to him and why he felt the technicals for Doncic had meaning behind them.
“He felt like I got hit, which I did get fouled, I got slapped across the head. He was telling the ref that that’s what happened and the ref was just like ‘I’ll talk to anybody but you,’ (talking about) Luka, obviously, so it seemed a little personal at that point. But he was just advocating for me saying I got fouled. The ref, he said basically he’ll talk to anybody on the team, but Luka so I don’t know what that was about.”
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