Three-time Most Valuable Player Jokic, 31, who also registered eight rebounds, played just over 18 minutes in Texas to reach 65 games and become eligible for the league’s season-ending awards.
Denver’s Julian Strawther scored 25 points and Jonas Valanciunas finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds.
De’Aaron Fox led the Spurs with 24 points while MVP contender Victor Wembanyama was rested following his 40-point performance in the 139-120 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday.
Second seed San Antonio, who secured their play-off spot against the Mavericks, will host the winner of the in-play tournament game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Phoenix Suns in the first round.
The in-play tournament is a round-robin competition which follows the regular season, where eight teams compete to establish the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference.
Oklahoma City Thunder, who are defending NBA champions and top seed in the West, plus Eastern Conference first and second seeds the Detroit Pistons and the Boston Celtics, will find out their first-round opponents once the in-play tournament finishes on Friday.
Iranian opposition leader calls on Trump administration to ‘stay the course’ as the US and Israel continue to wage war on Iran.
Published On 28 Mar 202628 Mar 2026
Amid questions about the future of Iran’s government, the son of the former shah has pitched himself to a right-wing summit in the United States and received a raucous welcome.
Reza Pahlavi spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas on Saturday, urging US President Donald Trump not to cut a deal with Iran and instead seek regime change.
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“Can you imagine Iran going from ‘Death to America’ to ‘God Bless America’?” the self-styled crown prince asked his audience in Grapevine, Texas.
“President Trump is making America great again. I intend to make Iran great again,” he added, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.
His remarks came on the one-month anniversary of the US and Israel’s decision to launch a war against Iran. As the conflict enters its second month, at least 1,937 people in Iran have been killed, and tens of thousands more injured, with no end to the fighting in sight.
Pahlavi has become a central opposition figure in the Iranian diaspora, with a loyal base of supporters who often carry his image, along with Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag, at protests around the world.
During his speech, some in the audience chanted, “Long live the king!”
Audience members wrapped in Lion and Sun flags, symbolising Iran’s deposed monarchy, listen to a speech from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah [Callaghan O’Hare/Reuters]
While some in the Iranian diaspora have expressed reservations about the US-Israeli attacks and their effect on the future of Iran, Pahlavi has emerged as an outspoken supporter of Trump, aligned with the administration’s most hawkish figures.
“This regime in its entirety must go,” he said on Saturday.
Analysts have warned that the Iranian government is not likely to collapse and could emerge from the conflict more hardened than before. Some exiles, meanwhile, have been criticised for lending their voices to support the US-Israeli war despite the heavy toll on Iranian civilians.
Trump has himself previously downplayed the possibility that the son of the former shah, who was expelled from Iran during the country’s 1979 revolution, could play a central role in Iran if the current government were to collapse.
Earlier this month, Trump said that Pahlavi “looks like a very nice person“, but indicated that the shah’s son lacks popularity in Iran.
“It would seem to me that somebody from within, maybe, would be more appropriate,” Trump had said.
Divides within the US right over the war in Iran were also in evidence at CPAC. Polls suggest that, while the war is widely unpopular among US voters, Republicans support it by large margins.
In a Pew Research Center poll, for instance, 71 percent of Republican voters felt the US had made the right decision to attack Iran. Overall, among voters regardless of party, 59 percent opposed the initial strikes.
Still, a handful of influential voices on the US right, such as Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, have emerged as vocal critics of the war. Younger activists have also expressed frustration with what they see as a betrayal of Trump’s promise to avoid military adventures overseas.
“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America First policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty, told The Associated Press. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”
