{"id":917993,"date":"2026-10-06T09:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T09:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/917993\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T09:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T09:10:17","slug":"nbl-2026-adelaide-36ers-nick-rakocevic-charged-with-striking-mojave-king-incident-suspension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/917993\/","title":{"rendered":"NBL 2026: Adelaide 36ers Nick Rakocevic charged with striking, Mojave King incident, suspension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adelaide 36ers forward Nick Rakocevic has been handed his punishment following an on-court incident involving New Zealand Breakers forward Mojave King on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Game Review Panel (GRP) has charged Rakocevic with striking, classifying the conduct as intentional, low impact and high contact.<\/p>\n

The charge carries a one-game suspension, which would see Rakocevic miss Wednesday night\u2019s blockbuster clash against Melbourne United.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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However, Rakocevic and the 36ers have since accepted an early guilty plea, which reduces the penalty to a $1,550 fine and will now allow him to take the court against United.<\/p>\n

During Adelaide\u2019s 88-72 loss to New Zealand, Rakocevic found himself involved in a heated and physical battle with several players under the basket early in the third quarter, with the Breakers leading just 48-47 at the time.<\/p>\n

The play showed Rakocevic being boxed out by King before the 36ers forward appeared to make contact with the Breakers star, prompting an immediate reaction from the commentary team.<\/p>\n

\u201cRakocevic came in strongly! Across the face of Mo King and that looked like an unsportsmanlike foul,\u201d NBL commentator John Casey said.<\/p>\n

1990 NBL MVP Derek Rucker shared Casey\u2019s sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it definitely was an unsportsmanlike foul.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRakocevic came in crazy and just started clearing people out!\u201d<\/p>\n

NBL MVP Power Rankings: New MVP frontrunner emerges as reigning king slides; breakout Aussie storms into race<\/a><\/p>\n

The incident was not reviewed during the game and play continued, but less than 24 hours later, the NBL confirmed Rakocevic had been referred to the Game Review Panel.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Rakocevic, this is not his first encounter with the GRP, having already found himself in this position twice during his short NBL career.<\/p>\n

Last December against Melbourne United, Rakocevic was charged with striking following an incident involving former United forward Finn Delany.<\/p>\n

Rakocevic was ejected from the game, with the GRP initially classifying his conduct as intentional, high impact and high contact.<\/p>\n

However, during a hearing the following Monday, a Single Member Tribunal found Rakocevic guilty of the offence but downgraded the impact from high to medium, imposing a two-game suspension with one game suspended for a period of 24 months.<\/p>\n

Just over a month later, the star forward found himself in hot water again, this time following a fiery altercation involving several players during Adelaide\u2019s clash with the Brisbane Bullets.<\/p>\n

Rakocevic was involved in a physical confrontation that saw him forced into a chokehold by former Bullets import Terry Taylor, with the 36ers forward subsequently handed an unsportsmanlike behaviour charge.<\/p>\n

As a result, Rakocevic was required to serve the one-game suspension hanging over him from the previous incident involving Delany.<\/p>\n

With the club accepting the early guilty plea and paying the $1,550 fine, Rakocevic will be available to face United in a must-win clash in front of a home crowd desperate to see the 36ers get their season back on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide 36ers forward Nick Rakocevic has been handed his punishment following an on-court incident involving New Zealand Breakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-917993","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\/917993","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=917993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}