{"id":526319,"date":"2026-03-10T07:37:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/526319\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T07:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:37:20","slug":"thunders-dort-apologizes-to-nuggets-jokic-after-latest-flagrant-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/526319\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder’s Dort apologizes to Nuggets’ Jokic after latest flagrant foul"},"content":{"rendered":"

But at the end of the day, it’s just basketball, which is why Thunder star Luguentz Dort<\/a> apologized to three-time MVP Nikola Jokic after their latest confrontation on Monday.<\/p>\n

Late in the fourth quarter of a 129-26 Thunder win, Dort was chasing Nuggets guard Jamal Murray at the arc when Jokic set a screen. As Dort made a move to avoid the pick, his left arm swung up and struck Jokic in the face. After review, Dort was awarded a flagrant 1 foul, and Jokic received two free throws plus a Nuggets possession.<\/p>\n

“Just lost in the competition,” Dort told ESPN afterwards<\/a>. “But shook his hand, (said) ‘great game’ and I apologized that that happened.”<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first bout of violence between Dort and Jokic this season. In a game on Feb. 27, Dort tripped Jokic and the two then shoved each other as a scrum involving players on both sides broke out. Dort was ejected from that game and players and coaches from both teams traded verbal jabs in the media afterward.<\/p>\n

This time, the two players are taking the high road.<\/p>\n

“It was over since last time,” Jokic said when asked Monday if there were still any hard feelings with Dort.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t mean to hit him in the face,” Dort added. “But when I go over screens and stuff like that, my arms are just everywhere, and then unfortunately I just hit him in the face. … I didn’t think it was a flagrant 1. Unnecessary means I did (it) on purpose, which I didn’t.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But at the end of the day, it’s just basketball, which is why Thunder star Luguentz Dort apologized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-526319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}