UPDATE: It’s now official, Luka Doncic has been suspended one game for reaching his 16th technical foul of the season. He will sit out on Monday, March 30, when the Lakers host the Washington Wizards.
Doncic will face another game suspension for every two technical fouls from here on out. That count resets with the start of the playoffs.
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Luka Doncic — in the midst of a March where he is averaging 37.2 points, 8.2 rebounds and 7.1 assists per game — is about to get a mandated one-game suspension after picking up his 16th technical foul of the season.
Unless the technical is rescinded by the league — which happened with Doncic’s last one but is highly unlikely in this case — he will serve his suspension and sit out Monday when the Lakers face the Washington Wizards.
Doncic picked up his 16th technical after a third-quarter exchange with Brooklyn’s Ziaire Williams, and the pair was assessed a double-technical.
The sequence that led to the double technicals for Luka Doncic and Ziaire Williams.
— Khobi Price (@khobi_price) March 28, 2026
If Luka's technical foul (his 16th of the season), isn't rescinded like last time, by league rule he'll have to serve a one-game suspension Monday vs. Washington. https://t.co/Qjj7EOZcTB pic.twitter.com/esYjyebu9B
"[Williams] was yelling in my face — three times,” Doncic said about the altercation, via the Associated Press. “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 NBA mandates a one-game suspension for any player who reaches 16 technicals in a season. Coach JJ Redick said the Lakers would appeal this technical, but from the video this seems unlikely to be overturned (as the last technical Doncic got was).
Doncic, one of the league’s most relentless complainers to officials, is regularly among the league leaders in technical fouls (top six each of the last five seasons). The only other player suspended this season for reaching 16 technicals was Phoenix’s Dillon Brooks.
Doncic’s play of late has him making an MVP push, with a crowded group at the top including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic. Missing a game against a tanking Wizards team, where Doncic could have put up big numbers, does not help that cause.
