These cautionary stories show how quickly NBA stardom can unravel when players make decisions that violate the league's standards.
Source: Evan Bernstein / Getty
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
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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.
2. O.J. Mayo
Mayo’s fall was especially jarring because he came into the league with real star buzz. In 2016, the NBA announced that he had been dismissed and disqualified for violating the terms of the league’s anti-drug program. He was eligible to apply for reinstatement after two years, but he never made it back to the NBA, which turned what was technically a pathway back into a ban that effectively ended his run in the league.
3. Tyreke Evans
Evans went from Rookie of the Year and franchise cornerstone energy to being out of the league entirely. In 2019, the NBA dismissed and disqualified him for violating the NBA/NBPA Anti-Drug Program. He was eligible to apply for reinstatement in two years and eventually was reinstated, but that ban still stands as one of the biggest career derailments of the modern era.
4. Jalen Harris
Harris didn’t have much time to establish himself before the league slammed the brakes on his career. In July 2021, the NBA announced that the Raptors guard had been dismissed and disqualified for violating the anti-drug program. Because he was a first-year player, he was eligible to apply for reinstatement after one year, and he eventually got that chance. However, the ban still interrupted what could have been a real developmental runway.
5. Chris Andersen
Before “Birdman” became a cult favorite and eventual NBA champ in Miami, he got kicked out of the league in 2006 for violating the NBA’s drug policy. He had to sit out two full years before even being allowed to seek reinstatement, and that kind of ban usually ends careers. Andersen beat the odds, got reinstated in 2008, and turned one of the darkest moments of his life into a comeback story.
6. John Drew
John Drew was one of the first major cautionary tales of the NBA’s cocaine era. A two-time All-Star, Drew was banned in January 1986 after repeated violations of the league’s substance-abuse policy, making him one of the earliest high-profile names to get hit with that level of punishment. His talent was never in doubt, but addiction and repeated legal trouble swallowed up the back half of his career.
7. Michael Ray Richardson
“Sugar” was cold for real, but the NBA’s drug crackdown caught up with him, too. In 1986, Richardson became the first active NBA player to be banned by the league after testing positive for cocaine for a third time under the policy. He was later reinstated, but he never returned to the NBA, which makes his case one of the clearest examples of how superstar-level talent can lose the whole league behind substance abuse.
8. Eddie Johnson
Not to be confused with the other Eddie Johnson, who later became a respected broadcaster, “Fast Eddie” was a serious bucket in Atlanta before everything crashed. His NBA career ended after arrests and drug issues led to his ban in 1987, and his life later spiraled even further into the criminal justice system. It’s one of the sadder stories on this list because the game had already made it clear how good he was.
9. Lewis Lloyd
Lewis Lloyd was one of the smoothest scorers of the mid-’80s Rockets, but in January 1987, he and teammate Mitchell Wiggins were banned after testing positive for cocaine. At the time, those suspensions were part of the league’s broader effort to clean up the image of a sport battling a very public drug problem. Lloyd did eventually return, but the ban still carved a major hole into the middle of his prime.
10. Mitchell Wiggins
Wiggins’ story ran alongside Lloyd’s because the two Houston teammates got caught in the same wave. He was banned in 1987 after testing positive for cocaine and had to spend years away before making it back. Even though he returned and kept playing professionally, the ban changed the trajectory of what could have been a much steadier NBA career.
11. Chris Washburn
Washburn had a top-three-pick pedigree, but his name is now more closely associated with lost potential than anything else. In 1989, the NBA banned him for life after another relapse under the league’s anti-drug agreement. He was allowed to appeal after two years, but by that point his NBA story had already become one of the league’s most painful “what ifs.”
12. Richard Dumas
Dumas looked like a huge part of Phoenix’s future when he flashed during the Suns’ 1993 Finals run, but substance-abuse issues kept throwing his career off track. The league suspended him in 1993 under its program, and by the mid-’90s, he had missed nearly two full seasons because of those violations before briefly returning. He is not remembered as a classic case of a permanent lifetime ban. Still, he absolutely belongs in any conversation about NBA players who got banned from NBA action for drug-related issues.
13. Stanley Roberts
Roberts was another big man whose NBA path got wrecked by drugs. In 1999, Philadelphia’s backup center was expelled from the league after testing positive for what the NBA described as an amphetamine-based designer drug, the first expulsion under the league’s tougher drug policy at the time. He was eventually reinstated, but the damage to his NBA standing was already done.
14. Roy Tarpley
Tarpley had All-Star talent and real force in the pain, but addiction kept dogging him. After an earlier ban and reinstatement, the Mavericks’ big man was permanently banned again in December 1995 for using alcohol and violating the terms of his aftercare program. His case hit hard because Dallas had already given him another shot, and it still ended the same way.
15. Ralph Beard
Beard wasn’t just some fringe name from the back-and-white era. He was an All-NBA guard and one of the stars tied to the 1951 point-shaving scandal that rocked college basketball. After admitting involvement tied to his Kentucky days, Beard was permanently banned from the NBA, cutting off what had looked like a legit high-level pro career almost as soon as it got started.
16. Alex Groza
Groza was even bigger as a name than Beard at the time, which makes his fall even crazier in hindsight. The former Kentucky star and early NBA standout was also permanently banned in the aftermath of the 1951 point-shaving scandal. He had already made multiple All-NBA teams, so this wasn’t some role player getting clipped quietly — this was a foundational talent getting erased from the league almost overnight.
17. Jack Molinas
Molinas is one of the dirtiest names in old-school basketball scandal history. ESPN’s look back at the era notes that he was suspended by the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1954 for gambling on games his team played, and that the scandal was only the beginning of a much bigger web of point-shaving and organized crime ties surrounding him. If you’re building a Mount Rushmore of basketball self-destruction, his name is on it.
18. Connie Hawkins
Hawkins’ case is just different because his ban was deeply unjust. He was swept up in the Jack Molinas scandal era despite repeated insistence from principals in the case that he had no role in fixing games; still, commissioner Walter Kennedy banned him, costing him years of NBA time before the league settled his lawsuit in 1969. So yes, he was banned — but he was also one of the clearest examples of the league getting it wrong.
19. Roger Brown
Brown got hit by that same stain-by-association treatment. The NBA banned him after he was linked to Molinas, even though later accounts and the Pacers’ own historical write-up make clear he did not bet on games or shave points. Like Hawkins, Brown built a great ABA career while the NBA kept its doors shut, which is why his story still feels equal parts tragic and infuriating.
20. Doug Moe
Many fans know Doug Moe as a coach, but before that, he was a player blackballed by the NBA in the fallout from the point-shaving scandal. ESPN’s historical recap notes that Moe took money to attend a meeting arranged around the scandal, even though he turned down the offer to throw games, and the league kept him out. He eventually built a strong ABA career and later became an NBA Coach of the Year, which makes his story one of the strangest full-circle journeys on this whole list.
All of these cases really land when you remember the difference between being talented enough for the NBA and being able to survive everything that comes with it. Some of these guys got swallowed by additction. Some got caught gambling. Some got railroaded by scandal and guilt by association. But all of them are proof that once the league decides you crossed a certain line, getting that jersey back is a lot harder than earning it in the first place. And that’s exactly why the Jaden Ivey situation, messy as it already is, feels like such a loud warning sign.
