Bobby Portis received’t be eligible to return for your Bucks right up until April eight. (Photograph by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)
Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis was suspended 25 online games with out purchase violating the NBA’s anti-drug application, the league announced Thursday. He tested constructive for Tramadol.
Portis’ agent, Mark Bartelstein, released a statement proclaiming the violation was effectively a mixture-up. Bartelstein said Portis believed he was taking a ache medication named Toradol, which happens to be authorized, but alternatively took Tramadol, which is not. The assertion claimed Portis was supplied the incorrect medication by an assistant of his, and it had been “an trustworthy blunder.”
“Bobby Portis is absolutely not a drug abuser,” Bartelstein wrote. “Bobby works tirelessly on expanding hisperformance in all purely natural, legal and healthy means, but he manufactured a blunder and took a tablet that unknowingly he should not have. Currently, In this particular occasion, I'm so deeply dissatisfied the NBA chooses to interpret its plan so strictly, and that the plan will not allow for another result for an truthful blunder with pure intentions.”
In an announcement produced with the Bucks, Portis explained, “I sense horrible and realize which i’m accountable for what I place in my overall body. From The underside of my heart, I desire to apologize into the Bucks Corporation, my teammates, coaches, loved ones and lovers. I give all the things I've about the court and may terribly miss out on actively playing video games for the Bucks throughout this time.”
Bucks general supervisor Jon Horst stated that whilst “this is the very hard list of situations for Bobby and our workforce … we one hundred% support Bobby.”
The 25-activity suspension would make Portis ineligible to return until eventually the Bucks’ April eight residence activity towards the Minnesota Timberwolves. Including that match, the Bucks would've just 4 normal-year online games remaining. Milwaukee presently sits in fifth area in the Eastern Meeting, a single video game back again of your Indiana Pacers.
Portis has performed in forty six online games for that Bucks this year, averaging 25.two minutes, thirteen.7 points and eight.3 rebounds per sport.