Jaden Ivey’s last few days have been the kind of spiral that makes the whole league stop and stare. The now-former Bulls guard went on a string of lengthy Instagram Lives sessions, where he ripped the NBA’s support of Pride Month, made anti-LGBTQ+ remarks, and bounced into broader religious rants that only got more unsettling the longer they went. Chicago didn’t drag its feet. The Bulls waived him on March 30 for conduct detrimental to the team, with Billy Donovan making it clear that whatever Ivey was putting out did not align with the organization’s standards of professionalism and respect.
That’s what makes pro sports such a gift and such a cold business at the same time. Making it to the NBA means you’ve already done what almost nobody on earth can do, but staying there is a whole different challenge. Sometimes a player loses his spot because the fit is off. Sometimes it’s injuries. Sometimes it’s a trade or a waiver that comes out of nowhere. And sometimes a player’s own choices get so reckless, so self-destructive, or so far outside the league’s rules that the punishment goes way beyond just losing minutes. Ivey has not reached that point, to be clear, but his bizarre public unraveling is still a reminder of how quickly a career can start to head in the wrong direction.
And with that in mind, it’s worth looking back at the NBA players who actually did cross that line. Some were hit with lifetime bans that later got lifted. Others were pushed out for gambling, drugs, or point-shaving scandals that wrecked their NBA futures for good. Either way, these are 20 NBA players who, at one point or another, were banned from the league.
1. Jontay Porter
Porter is the freshest and one of the wildest examples. In April 2024, the NBA banned him for life after a league investigation found that he gave confidential information to sports bettors, limited his own participation in games for betting purposes, and placed bets on NBA games himself. In a league now fully wrapped up in the gambling economy, that was the kind of violation Adam Silver clearly felt had to get the harshest possible punishment.