INDIANAPOLIS — Luka Doncic started Monday hopeful he would play at Indiana.
A few hours later, NBA officials announced they had rescinded the All-Star’s most recent technical foul and the subsequent one-game suspension. Doncic responded to that news with the kind of dazzling performance the Dallas Mavericks desperately needed for their final playoff push.
He finished with 25 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists, helping the Mavericks snap a four-game losing streak with a dominant 127-104 victory over the short-handed Indiana Pacers.
The victory keeps Dallas within striking distance of the Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder in the race for the final two play-in spots in the Western Conference.
Doncic had picked up his 16th technical Sunday in the team’s loss to Charlotte. The technical came with 7:51 remaining in the third quarter of a 110-104 loss when Doncic argued a no-call after missing a shot on a drive to the basket.
Crew chief Kevin Scott said in a pool report after the game that Doncic used “a profanity directed at the officials in protest to a no-call that was correctly judged in postgame video review.”
This is the second technical foul assessed to Doncic this season that has been rescinded. Players automatically get a one-game suspension after 16 technical fouls each season, and for every two technicals thereafter. Memphis Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks (twice) and Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green have served suspensions due to their technicals totals this season.
Doncic also narrowly avoided a suspension the prior two years, finishing each of those seasons with 15 technical fouls. He had a technical rescinded before last year’s regular-season finale. He has now had two technicals rescinded in each of the past three seasons.
Sunday’s technical foul occurred two days after Doncic was fined by the league for rubbing his fingers together, in an apparent reference to money, while staring down a ref during last week’s loss to the Warriors.
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: www.espn.com