5 players with the most technical fouls in NBA history

#4 Gary Payton - 250

Gary Payton is the only point guard to ever win the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award.

Gary Payton was one of the best point guards of his generation and is also the only point guard to ever win the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award. He was also one of the greatest trash talkers ever and used to get under opposition players' skin.

If you paid attention to Payton's trash talk, there are high chances that you will lose sight of the task at hand i.e. win the basketball game.

When you play solid defense (forget the trash talking), a lot of times, there are going to be controversial calls where you feel like the referee is being unfair to you. This happened with Payton very often and he used to become furious at the referees for assessing a foul. He would go on to argue with the referee were things would more often than not go bad.

In a career spanning over 17 years, Payton picked up 250 technical fouls and is also the only point guard to have received so many technical fouls.

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#3 Rasheed Wallace - 317

Rasheed Wallace had 41 technical fouls during the 2000-01 season.

We have a surprise here. The surprise is not about Rasheed Wallace making it to this list because most people might have guessed even before clicking on this article that the 2004 NBA champion would feature on this list.

The surprise here is that he is not #1 on this list. Wallace had 38 technical fouls in 1999-2000 season. The following term, he broke his own record and amassed 41 technical fouls which means that he has received one technical foul for every two games. Let that sink in.

He once even confronted referee Tim Donaghy after a regular season game in 2003 for giving him a technical foul while playing for the Portland Trail Blazers. Wallace was suspended for seven games for this incident.

Wallace ended his career with as many as 317 technical fouls.