{"id":405815,"date":"2026-01-11T08:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T08:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/405815\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T08:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T08:07:10","slug":"latest-rumors-on-bill-kennedys-injury-status-after-nba-ref-left-76ers-vs-magic-in-wheelchair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/405815\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Rumors on Bill Kennedy’s Injury, Status After NBA Ref Left 76ers vs. Magic in Wheelchair"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA referee Bill Kennedy was diagnosed with a hamstring strain and will be out indefinitely, according to NBA insider Chris Haynes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Haynes added “the hope” is Kennedy can return before the end of the regular season. <\/p>\n

Kennedy was taken off the court of Friday night’s game between the Philadelphia 76ers and host Orlando Magic in a wheelchair<\/a> after suffering what appeared to be a non-contact right leg injury in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

The remainder of the game was officiated<\/a> by James Williams and Michael Smith.<\/p>\n

Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said after the game he heard rumors Kennedy had suffered an Achilles injury, according to The Athletic’s Tony Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Let’s hope it’s not that,” Nurse said, per Jones.<\/p>\n

Kennedy, 59, is in his 26th season<\/a> as an NBA referee. He has become known for his viral explanations<\/a> of the results of coach’s challenges.<\/p>\n

Kennedy’s flair for dramatic pauses before announcing results led to him receiving a compliment last week from Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla.<\/p>\n

“Really just kind of wanted to hear Billy Kennedy,” Mazzulla said<\/a> when asked about a late-game challenge on Jan. 1. “He does a great challenge, and we were gonna do it anyway, just to kind of hear him deliver the challenge.”<\/p>\n

Kennedy had officiated<\/a> 1,420 regular-season games and 139 playoff games, including six NBA Finals games, through 25 seasons heading into the 2025-26 campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA referee Bill Kennedy was diagnosed with a hamstring strain and will be out indefinitely, according to NBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-405815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}