Photo: Screenshot of CHINADA website

Two US basketballers who played in China's top-tier basketball league CBA have been banned from competition for three months, the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) announced on Monday.

Montrezl Harrell of the Xinjiang Flying Tigers is banned from playing until February 4, 2026, while Troy Gillenwater of the Guangdong South China Tigers is barred from playing until January 12, 2026.

Both players tested positive for carboxy-THC, the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis and marijuana, during in-competition testing in the 2024-25 CBA season. 

Both Xinjiang and Guangdong's team doctors were given a warning by the CHINADA. The two clubs were also given a warning and ordered to cover the costs of 20 doping tests for the respective athletes.

In the 2024-25 CBA regular season, Gillenwater averaged 29.9 minutes per game, putting up 25.9 points, 7.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per match, while Harrell played eight games for Xinjiang last season, averaging 12.9 points and 4.9 rebounds.

Neither of the aforementioned two US players' names appeared in Xinjiang or Guangdong's rosters for the 2025-26 CBA season, which kicked off on Friday. 

Yang Yang, president of the CBA league company, emphasized in November at the news conference for the CBA 2025-26 season that harsher penalties will be imposed on clubs involved in doping violations. 

Yang said the league will increase the number of points deducted in club licensing assessments, adopt result annulment measures fully aligned with FIBA standards, and underscore its zero-tolerance stance on doping.

Fu Zhenghao, a Beijing-based basketball commentator, told the Global Times that the new CBA rules stipulates that if a team has two players involved in doping violations, all matches in which those players participated from the date of the player's anti-doping test onward will be recorded as 20-0 defeats for that team.