LaMelo Ball shouldn't have been thrown out of Saturday's game for spitting on the court. He should be fined, he probably will be, and that fine won't change a single thing about how he behaves the next time a whistle goes against him.
Start with the act itself. In the second quarter at the Frost Bank Center, after picking up his fourth foul before halftime, Ball spat straight onto the hardwood. That's the right word for it: disgusting. Other players dive on that floor, slide across it, plant their hands on it. Spitting on a shared playing surface in the middle of a game is one of the grossest things a professional can do, and the people ripping him for it have it right.
The rule itself is where people get tangled up. The NBA rulebook has no line that says spitting on the court means an automatic ejection. It has unsportsmanlike conduct, a technical foul, plus a referee's discretion to eject for one act if it's blatant enough. A crew could have thrown him out. This didn't force their hand, and treating the rulebook as if it demanded an ejection is wishful thinking.
The kindest read is that this was a thoughtless, one-off moment from a guy drowning in foul trouble. He was rattled all night, fouled out with 3:43 left, and finished with 10 points on 2-of-10 shooting in 20 minutes. His coach, Chris Finch, went after the officials at the podium: "To be fair, they're fouling him all over the floor. They got their hands on him. They're bumping him. They're holding him. They're riding him off of his line." Ball's own answer was all about the whistle: "You seen all the fouls I had? You think I had six? Q. I would probably say no. Ball: That's bottom line." He admitted he needs to be "smarter" and said, "I wasn't even trying to foul, and it was just happening."
None of that mentions the spit.
That's bigger than one wad of saliva. This is a guy fined $35,000 for an obscene gesture at a referee in October 2025, fined $100,000 for a derogatory comment in a 2024 postgame interview, and fined $60,000 total for a flagrant takedown of Bam Adebayo in the April 2026 play-in, a play the league publicly said should have been called flagrant and merited an ejection. He got his first career ejection back in 2023 for arguing with officials. There was a separate flashpoint in this same game too: a shove on Victor Wembanyama that Ball waved off afterward. "I know the first one I tried to help Wemby up. Foul. Just, I guess silly stuff."
The league's pattern is the real issue: watch it happen live, let it go, mail him an invoice a day or two later. There's no announced discipline for the spit yet, and when it lands it'll be another number on a list he treats as the cost of doing business. You can't fine a frustration problem out of a man making NBA money. The refs didn't blow this one, and the league's fines aren't fixing it. The only person who can stop this is the one who keeps doing it, and he still won't even say it happened.
