Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George has been suspended for 25 games without pay for violating anti-drug protocol, the NBA announced on Saturday.<\/p>\n
George said he “made the mistake of taking an improper medication” and his ban will start with Saturday night’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans.<\/p>\n
He is expected to be eligible to return on March 25, when Philadelphia host the Chicago Bulls, at which point they will have 10 games remaining in the regular season.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old is averaging 16 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the 76ers across 27 games so far this campaign.<\/p>\n
In a statement to ESPN, George – who has also played for the Indiana Pacers, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Los Angeles Clippers – said: “Over the past few years, I’ve discussed the importance of mental health.<\/p>\n
“In the course of recently seeking treatment for an issue of my own, I made the mistake of taking an improper medication.<\/p>\n
“I take full responsibility for my actions and apologise to the Sixers organisation, my team-mates and the Philly fans for my poor decision making during this process.<\/p>\n
“I am focused on using this time to make sure that my mind and body are in the best condition to help the team when I return.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George has been suspended for 25 games without pay for violating anti-drug protocol, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-449975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449975","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=449975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}