DENVER (AP) — Denver coach David Adelman was ejected Saturday for the first time in his NBA coaching career.
Adelman, who took over from Michael Malone with three games left in last year's regular season and got the full-time job after leading Denver into the second round of the NBA playoffs, was tossed by official Tyler Ricks in the fourth quarter of Denver's 115-101 loss to the Houston Rockets.
Adelman, who also drew a technical foul in the first half, said he was flustered that Nikola Jokic picked up two debatable fouls early on and that he should have gotten the whistle midway through the fourth quarter and didn't.
“It felt like they had one foul with 5 minutes to go in the second quarter. And I just felt like both teams were playing so hard, extremely hard, physical," Adelman said. "I give the Rockets so much credit, they crashed the glass every time. And then we get two somewhat soft fouls on our best player — which leads to him fouling twice that are fouls and that (makes) four fouls and he's got to come out of the game.
“So, honestly, I was confused,” added Adelman. “So, I was just looking for answers and I went out there to find them and it turns out I had to leave. Sometimes confusion can lead to destructive things, right? You've got to think things through yourself sometimes."
Adelman allowed that he never got an answer: “It seemed like he just kept walking away farther and farther. I thought we would talk and it turns out they told me I had to leave. So, yeah, it was a tough night for us, for sure.”
The Nuggets trailed 80-72 at the time of his ejection. Assistant coach Jared Dudley took over after Adelman left.
Adelman said he didn't think the officiating was in any way related what happened when Rockets coach Ime Udoka drew a $25,000 fine from the NBA for publicly criticizing the officiating in Houston’s 128-125 overtime loss to the Nuggets on Monday night.
Udoka said in the postgame press conference that it was “the most poorly officiated (he’s) seen in a long time” and said the crew chief was starstruck and his two colleagues were unqualified. The fine came after the NBA’s Last Two Minute Report revealed that there were three incorrect calls in the overtime, all of which favored Denver.
“I hope that's not what happened — I don't think it was,” Adelman said, calling lead official Marc Davis “one of the best officials in the league" and adding, “I thought those other guys (Ricks and Eric Dalen) did the best they could. Like I said, I was just confused with the flow of the game. I've got to be better than that, too. The game wasn't over. I let my emotions get the best of me.”
As Adelman chased down Ricks, Rockets star Kevin Durant crossed his path while mimicking the ejection motion used by basketball referees.
Durant and former teammate Bruce Brown got into some heated exchanges earlier in the chippy game: “Some words were said that were a little disrespectful," Brown said. “So, I can't wait to see him next time.”
The teams don't play again until March.
Brown declined to reveal exactly what Durant said to him but said it crossed the line, insisting, “As a man, there's certain things you don't say to another man.”
A notorious trash talker, Durant concurred that his words indeed went too far, but he insisted that some players can hoop and talk trash at the same time and some can't.
Durant and Brown, who once played together with the Nets, really got into it after Brown's bucket pulled Denver to 69-62 in the third quarter. As officials and teammates separated them during a timeout, it appeared Durant told Brown, “ You a bum! ”
A night earlier, Brown sat between the benches wearing a hockey helmet and serving as a television color commentator during the second period of the Colorado Avalanche's 3-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets.
Asked if there are any takeaways from the National Hockey League that could maybe shape his game in the NBA, Brown cracked, “I wish there was fighting."
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
Denver Nuggets assistant coach Jared Dudley looks on from the bench after taking over the team when head coach David Adelman was ejected in the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Houston Rockets, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Denver Nuggets head coach David Adelman, front left, reacts after being ejected by referee Tyler Ricks, right, as assistant coach J.J. Barea, second from right, holds him back in the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Houston Rockets, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
CONCORDIA, Mexico (AP) — Deep in the coastal mountains above the sparkling Pacific resort of Mazatlan, towns spaced along a twisting road appear nearly deserted, the quiet broken only by the occasional passing truck.
It was near one of these towns, Panuco, that 10 employees of a Canadian-owned silver and gold mine were abducted in late January. The bodies of five were located nearby and five more await identification.
Most residents of these towns have fled out of fear as two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have been locked in battle since September 2024, said Fermín Labrador, a 68-year-old from the nearby village of Chirimoyos. Others, he said, were “invited” to leave.
The abduction of the mine workers under still unclear circumstances has raised fears locally and more widely generated questions about the security improvements touted by President Claudia Sheinbaum. She signaled her more aggressive stance toward drug cartels in Sinaloa with captures and drug seizures after she took office in late 2024. It has been one year since she sent 10,000 National Guard troops to the northern border to try to head off U.S. tariffs over the cartels’ fentanyl trafficking, much of which comes from Sinaloa.
In January, Sheinbaum held up a sharp decline in homicide rates last year as evidence that her security strategy was working.
“What these kinds of episodes do is demolish the federal government’s narrative that insists that little by little they are getting control of the situation,” said security analyst David Saucedo. He said Sheinbaum had tried to “manage the conflict” while the Sinaloa Cartel’s internal war spread and split the state by obliging people “to take a side with one of the two groups.”
The mine workers’ disappearance in late January brought more troops into the mountains as they searched by air and on the ground for signs of them.
Mexico’s Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch came to coordinate the operation. Several arrests were made and from information gleaned from suspects, authorities found the clandestine graves.
But the increased security presence has not brought peace of mind to residents.
Roque Vargas, a human rights activist for people displaced by violence in the area, said that “all of the hubbub has scattered the organized crime guys” but he worries they could return. He and others are also concerned about being mistaken for bad guys and attacked by security forces when they leave their town, because it has happened elsewhere in the state.
“We’ve practically been abandoned,” he said.
Sheinbaum took office in October 2024, when Sinaloa was entering a new spiral of violence following the abduction of Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada by a son of former cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Zambada was handed over to U.S. authorities and his faction of the cartel went to war with the faction led by Guzmán’s sons.
Initially, residents of the state capital, Culiacan, were caught in the crossfire, but the conflict eventually extended statewide. U.S. President Donald Trump took office last year and designated the Sinaloa Cartel, among others, a foreign terrorist organization, upping the pressure on Sheinbaum’s administration to get tough with the cartels.
By last April, Vizsla Silver Corp., the Vancouver, Canada-based mine owner, announced it was halting activities at the mine because of security concerns in the area. The pause lasted a month.
García Harfuch said this month that the suspects arrested were part of the Sinaloa Cartel faction loyal to Guzmán’s sons, known as “los Chapitos,” and had mistaken the workers for belonging to the other faction. There has not been an explanation for how the confusion could have occurred since Vizsla said the workers were taken from their site.
Mines, along with other businesses like avocado groves and pipelines carrying gasoline, have long attracted organized crime's attention in Mexico as a source of extortion payments or to steal the extracted material.
Saucedo, who has researched cases in Guanajuato, Sinaloa and Sonora, said he has also seen cases where mines take advantage of armed groups to control mine opponents.
The Mexican government has said it has no reports that Vizsla was extorted. Sheinbaum said that her administration would talk with all mining companies in Mexico “to offer the support they require.”
Vizsla did not respond to questions emailed by The Associated Press, but has said in statements that its focus is on finding the remaining workers and supporting the affected families. Relatives of one of the workers declined to comment.
In the community of El Verde, in the foothills that rise between the ocean and the mountains, Marisela Carrizales stood beside banners bearing the photographs of missing people. The road leading to a site where clandestine graves were discovered was blocked by a police car. The surrounding town was silent.
“I’m here waiting for answers,” said Carrizales, who belongs to one of the many search collectives that have spread all over Mexico to look for the missing. She has been looking for her son, Alejandro, for 5 ½ years and had come to El Verde with more than 20 others also looking for missing relatives to monitor authorities’ work and demand that they help them look in other places, too. “We have information that there are a lot more graves here … we have to come to look for them.”
It was here in the first week of February that authorities found a clandestine grave and then more in the days that followed. The Attorney General’s office said 10 bodies were found in one location, five of which have been identified as the missing mine workers. But the Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office also said additional remains were found in four other grave sites around the community.
There are many missing. In Mazatlan, a Mexican tourist was taken from a bar in October. In January, a businessman disappeared. In February, six other Mexican tourists were abducted from a ritzy part of the resort city. A woman and a girl who were part of that group were later found alive outside the city, but the men who were with them have not appeared.
While the government has strengthened security in Mazatlan ahead of carnival celebrations, back in the mountains, teachers, doctors or even buses are not coming to many of the communities out of fear, Vargas said.
Labrador, the man from Chirimoyos, said that when he is lucky, he borrows a friend's motorcycle to go to his job in a highway toll booth. When he can’t borrow it, he has to walk more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) through the mountains, because the person in charge of local public transportation disappeared in December.
Verza reported from Mexico City.
Members of a group that searches for missing people walk alongside soldiers in El Verde, Sinaloa state, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Juvencio Villanueva)
Relatives and friends of 10 mine workers who were abducted last month in neighboring Sinaloa state, march demanding justice, in Hermosillo, Mexico, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Luis Gutierrez)
The wife of Antonio Jimenez, one of 10 mine workers who was abducted last month in neighboring Sinaloa state and whose body was identified by authorities, weeps at the conclusion of a memorial Mass for her husband, in Hermosillo, Mexico, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Luis Gutierrez)
Soldiers stand guard near a church in El Verde, Sinaloa state, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Juvencio Villanueva)
Relatives of Antonio Esparza, one of 10 mine workers abducted in neighboring Sinaloa state, during protest march in Hermosillo, Mexico, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Luis Gutierrez)
