Bobby Portis won’t be qualified to return with the Bucks right up until April eight. (Photograph by Stacy Revere/Getty Photos)
Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis was suspended twenty five games with out pay for violating the NBA’s anti-drug system, the league declared Thursday. He tested constructive for Tramadol.
Portis’ agent, Mark Bartelstein, launched a press release claiming the violation was essentially a mixture-up. Bartelstein mentioned Portis imagined he was using a suffering medication called Toradol, and that is authorized, but in its place took Tramadol, which is not. The assertion said Portis was supplied the incorrect medication by an assistant of his, and it had been “an truthful mistake.”
“Bobby Portis is completely not a drug abuser,” Bartelstein wrote. “Bobby is effective tirelessly on escalating hisperformance in all purely natural, authorized and healthful means, but he produced a error and took a pill that unknowingly he should not have. Right now, With this instance, I am so deeply unhappy which the NBA chooses to interpret its plan so strictly, and the coverage will not permit for a special end result for an honest blunder with pure intentions.”
In an announcement introduced via the Bucks, Portis said, “I really feel Terrible and realize which i’m accountable for what I place in my human body. From The underside of my heart, I want to apologize into the Bucks Group, my teammates, coaches, spouse and children and lovers. I give all the things I have to the courtroom and can terribly miss out on playing video games to the Bucks throughout this time.”
Bucks common manager Jon Horst claimed that while “this is a very hard list of situations for Bobby and our workforce … we 100% support Bobby.”
The 25-video game suspension would make Portis ineligible to return right up until the Bucks’ April eight household video game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Like that sport, the Bucks might have just four common-season game titles remaining. Milwaukee at the moment sits in fifth location during the Japanese Convention, one sport again from the Indiana Pacers.
Portis has performed in 46 game titles with the Bucks this period, averaging twenty five.two minutes, thirteen.seven factors and 8.3 rebounds for each match.