Technical fouls are a part of basketball at every level, but when called in the NBA, they also come with significant fiscal consequences.
Technicals can be issued for a myriad of reasons during the course of a game. This includes “non-unsportsmanlike” reasons such as excessive timeouts, delay of game, incorrect number of players on the floor or hanging on the basket and/or rim.
However, more detrimental are unsportsmanlike whistles for conduct such as disrespectfully addressing an official, physically contacting an official, overt actions indicating resentment of a call or non-call, use of profanity, taunting or deliberately throwing elbows at an opponent.
🗓 This Day in Stats, 2001: Rasheed Wallace of the @trailblazers finishes the season with 41 technical fouls, setting an @NBA single-season record that will likely never be broken (especially since 16 techs now leads to a suspension). pic.twitter.com/2AUHd3F9iC
— StatMuse (@statmuse) April 29, 2019
While the players we’ll discuss in the list are the modern leaders of getting T’d up, no one comes remotely close to what Rasheed Wallace accomplished during the 2000-01 campaign. Wallace was called for 41 technical fouls that season, which forced the league the eventually change the rules.
Nowadays, players are automatically suspended once they reach sixteen technical fouls in a single season — as Dwight Howard was this past season. Players then receive another automatic suspension with each passing two technical fouls they are called for (e.g. technical fouls No. 18, No. 20, etc.) subsequently.
Even though none of these players come close to matching the prolific rate Wallace once had, the following players are the ones who best embody his spirit:
(Data via Spotrac and Stats Perform)
