The Players Who Could Be Financially Impacted By The 65-Game Rule
Earning a spot on an All-NBA team is the simplest way for a player to become eligible for a Designated Veteran or Rose Rule contract, allowing them to earn a higher maximum salary than they'd typically qualify for (35% instead of 30% for veterans, or 30% instead of 25% for players coming off rookie contracts). But that doesn't mean that there are financial benefits for every player who receives All-NBA recognition.
In order to become "super-max" eligible, a player must meet a set of specific criteria related not just to his on-court achievements but to his total NBA years of service, his contract situation, and how he joined his current team.
For instance, Luka Doncic would have been super-max eligible last summer as a member of the Mavericks, but the trade that sent him to the Lakers took that option off the table, since a player who changes teams via trade during his second contract isn't permitted to sign a Designated Veteran deal. With a super-max deal no longer in play, Doncic signed a standard max-salary extension (starting at 30% of the cap) with his new team last summer.
So, while Doncic's bid to be granted an "extraordinary circumstances" exception to circumvent the 65-game rule and gain All-NBA (and MVP) eligibility this spring could have a real impact on his career résumé, there are no financial implications hinging on that ruling.
For other players who narrowly met the 65-game criteria or will fall just short of it, there are more significant financial consequences to take into account. In the space below, we're taking a closer look at the All-NBA caliber players whose future earnings figure to be impacted the most by whether or not they got to 65 games this season.
Pacific Notes: Lakers, Horford, Santos, Durant, Suns
After missing nine straight games due to a right ankle contusion, former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart will return to action on Friday for the Lakers, tweets Jovan Buha. Los Angeles, which is jockeying for playoff seeding in the Western Conference, faces Phoenix tonight.
Head coach JJ Redick said Thursday that he spoke to Luka Doncic, who is rehabilitating from a Grade 2 left hamstring strain in Europe, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN (Twitter link). Redick said Doncic was in “relatively good spirits,” adding that it’s been good to have Austin Reaves around the team as he recovers from his own injury (oblique strain).
Redick also had a conversation with Jarred Vanderbilt about Tuesday’s spat in which the 27-year-old forward accosted Redick for calling a timeout to remove him from the game (Twitter link via McMenamin). Redick didn’t divulge any details about that conversation but said it went “great.” Vanderbilt played 26 minutes in Thursday’s win at Golden State after receiving just five on Tuesday.
Here’s more from around the Pacific Division:
- As expected, Al Horford will return from a 14-game absence on Friday in Sacramento, relays Anthony Slater of ESPN (via Twitter). The Warriors big man has been out since March 13 due to a right calf (soleus) strain. Horford, who holds a $5.97MM player option for next season, has averaged 8.3 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 1.2 blocks in 43 appearances in 2025/26 (21.7 minutes per game).
- Several filmmakers from Brazil have been recording documentary footage of Gui Santos throughout the course of the Warriors forward’s third NBA season, as Danny Emerman of The San Francisco Standard details. The former second-round pick has unexpectedly been thrust into a major rotation role the past couple months after Jimmy Butler suffered a torn ACL in his right knee. Santos said he watches every episode and his family back home in Brazil loves the series, which is released on YouTube with English subtitles. “It’s on the internet, so that’s one thing that’s never going to get lost,” Santos told Emerman. “So, when I’m 50 years old or 40 years old, sit with my grandsons on the sofa just watching that: ‘Look, your grandpa was strong, your grandpa was playing in the NBA.’ That will be nice.“
- Rockets forward Kevin Durant said prior to Tuesday’s matchup in Phoenix that he’s “pretty much over” the way his Suns tenure ended, per Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic. It was Durant’s first game in Phoenix since he was traded to Houston last summer. “At the time, it was tough to take. A place I wanted to be. I wanted to keep building, but it’s the business of the league and it’s the business of basketball,” Durant said. “You’re not going to be in the same place all the time. It is what it is. Yeah, I was sour early on, but I think I’ve gotten over it. Time heals all. Just move on.” The 37-year-old star had 24 points, four rebounds and three assists during Tuesday’s game, which Houston won.
And-Ones: Lottery Reform, MVP, Playoff Storylines, Jones
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Wednesday that the lottery reform concept which has gained the most momentum is one that would expand the lottery to 18 teams and give the bottom 10 clubs equal odds at the top pick (8% each). The remaining 20% would be split among the eight play-in teams, with each of the top 18 spots in the draft drawn via lottery.
However, according to Kevin O’Connor of Yahoo Sports, a number of general managers who took part in a call on Tuesday to discuss the issue expressed reservations about that proposal, noting that it would give teams some incentives to tank out of the top six into play-in range — or to tank out of the play-in altogether.
“This solves nothing,” one GM said. “It could make the problem even worse just like the 14% odds did.”
As O’Connor details, some GMs expressed support for expanding the lottery to 22 teams instead of 14, since the idea of a team tanking a playoff series in order for an outside shot at the No. 1 pick is considered unlikely. Additionally, the odds would be flattened even further with 22 teams in the mix, reducing the appeal of tanking into a specific spot, O’Connor writes, since the upside would be smaller.
With the NBA looking to discourage a race to the bottom, one general manager suggested that the league’s worst three teams shouldn’t even be eligible for the No. 1 overall pick, O’Connor reports. While the league office found that suggestion to be too extreme, commissioner Adam Silver responded more enthusiastically to a proposal to slightly reduce the odds for the bottom three finishers.
If the NBA were to expand the lottery to 22 teams and slightly reduce the odds for the bottom three teams, O’Connor suggests that the result could look something like this: A 5% shot at the No. 1 pick for the bottom three teams; 6% for the other seven non-play-in teams; 5% for the play-in losers; 4% for the two worst teams among the first-round losers; 3% for the next three worst first-round losers; and 2% for the remaining three first-round losers.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the NBA:
- Who is the players’ choice for 2026 Most Valuable Player? According to Sam Amick, Josh Robbins, and Joe Vardon, the overwhelming choice among players polled by The Athletic is Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who received 62 of 159 total votes (39.0%). Nuggets center Nikola Jokic came in second with 34 votes (21.6%), while no other player earned more than 13 (8.2%). Notably, Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama finished outside the top five, though two of the players ahead of him – Pistons guard Cade Cunningham and Lakers guard Luka Doncic – may not end up being award-eligible due to the 65-game rule.
- Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst of ESPN spoke to executives, coaches, and scouts around the NBA to get a sense of which storylines they’ll be watching closest during the postseason. Those storylines include the Cavaliers‘ defensive regression, the Spurs‘ shooting surge, and Jalen Duren‘s ability to be a second option on a Finals team. “I like Duren,” one Western Conference executive said of the Pistons center, who will be a restricted free agent this summer. “I’m terrified to give him his max (salary), but the dude is a beast. He grabs every rebound, can guard and his scoring has exceeded everything I would have expected coming into the season.”
- After 36 years at the network, veteran NBA and college football play-by-play announcer Mark Jones is leaving ESPN, reports Andrew Marchand of The Athletic. According to Marchand, this Sunday’s game between Boston and Orlando will be the final one Jones works on ESPN.
Lakers Notes: Rotation, Smart, Vanderbilt, Reaves, Season
The Lakers have been left searching for answers in the wake of multi-week injuries to star guards Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, writes Benjamin Royer of The Southern California News Group. Head coach JJ Redick is trying to find a workable rotation with three regular season games remaining before the playoffs, but some of the players who seemed like locks for more minutes and touches have struggled.
Starting center Deandre Ayton, for instance, only had three points (on 1-of-4 shooting) and three rebounds in Tuesday’s blowout loss to Oklahoma City. Redick said he’s been calling plenty of plays for the No. 1 overall pick, yet the Bahamian big man hasn’t been able to capitalize on those opportunities.
“He’s just had trouble catching the ball,” Redick said. “And I don’t know if that’s the passing or if it’s, you know, him trying to get position, he just, he hasn’t been able to catch the ball.”
Entering last week’s game against the Thunder, in which both Doncic and Reaves sustained their respective injuries, the Lakers had gone 16-2 over their last 18 games. They’ve now dropped three straight, with lingering uncertainty about what the rotation will look like in the postseason.
“Chemistry was high,” guard Luke Kennard said. “We were really close as a group, and it still is. I feel like this might have brought us even closer. Obviously, it’s a different look out there on the court and different voices, but it was definitely a shock and something we weren’t expecting this late in the year going into the playoffs.”
Here’s more on the Lakers:
- Law Murray of The Athletic takes a look at which players might be part of the playoff rotation, listing them in tiers based on their likelihood of receiving minutes. LeBron James is in his own tier as “the anchor,” followed by Kennard, Marcus Smart, Jaxson Hayes and Jake LaRavia, who are in the “rotation locks” tier. Smart will miss his ninth consecutive game Thursday at Golden State due to a right ankle contusion, tweets Brad Turner of The Los Angeles Times. Redick continues to refer to Smart as day-to-day, according to Murray, though the second-year coach acknowledged the team thought the veteran guard would have returned from the injury by now.
- Redick downplayed a spat he had with Jarred Vanderbilt in the second quarter of Tuesday’s game, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com. Redick called timeout just 16 seconds into the second quarter to remove Vanderbilt, though it wasn’t clear why, and the 27-year-old responded by verbally lashing out at his coach. Redick said a “confluence of things” led to the incident. “It’s nothing personal with him. Normal stuff from my end,” Redick said after the loss. “I think for all of us, being undermanned, we’ve got to scrap and claw, we’ve got to all be on the same page, we got to be great teammates, we got to all play hard. Called a timeout to get him out of the game. And he reacted. But again, normal interaction for me.” Vanderbilt, who didn’t play at all after the incident, finished with three points, two rebounds, one assist and one steal in five minutes. The eighth-year forward left the arena before reporters were permitted into the locker room, McMenamin notes.
- Reaves is widely expected to decline his $14.9MM player option for next season to become a free agent this summer. How much money will he make in unrestricted free agency? Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report explores that question, writing that the 27-year-old will likely receive a multiyear deal with a starting salary somewhere between $30MM and $41.3MM (his max) in 2026/27.
- The Lakers aren’t going anywhere in the playoffs and the team should shut down Doncic and Reaves for the rest of the season so they don’t risk long-term damage by attempting to rush back from their injuries, argues Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles Times. Doncic traveled to Europe to try to expedite his recovery process from a Grade 2 hamstring strain, while Reaves is battling a strained oblique muscle.
Victor Wembanyama Has Rib Contusion, Doubtful To Play Wednesday
April 7: Wembanyama is listed doubtful to play in Wednesday’s game against Portland but there’s confidence he will play at least one of the team’s final three regular season games, ESPN’s Shams Charania tweets. The big man’s MRI came back clean, Chris Haynes of NBA on Prime tweets.
April 6: Spurs star Victor Wembanyama has been ruled out of the second half of Monday’s matchup vs. Philadelphia due to a left rib contusion, the team announced (Twitter link via Jared Weiss of The Athletic).
According to Weiss, the injury occurred in the first half when the French big man fell to the ground. Luke Kornet started the third quarter with Wembanyama sidelined.
The silver lining for Wembanyama is he was able to play 16 minutes in the first half, so the appearance will still count toward the 65-game minimum. The 22-year-old had one previous outing where he played 17 minutes and that will also count toward the games-played requirement.
Wembanyama needs to play at least 20 minutes in one of San Antonio’s final three games to be eligible for major postseason awards. In that scenario, he would be at 64 regular season games but would still meet the 65-game threshold because he played in the NBA Cup final, which counts toward the minimum requirement even though the statistics from that game aren’t officially recorded.
The No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft, Wembanyama had 17 points, five rebounds and three blocks in his 16 minutes Monday. The team was plus-seven when he was on the court.
Assuming he qualifies, Wembanyama is viewed as a lock to win Defensive Player of the Year and appears likely to be a finalist for MVP. He’s a strong candidate for first-team All-NBA as well.
In the latest straw poll from ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, which was released Thursday morning, Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the overwhelming favorite to win his second consecutive MVP award. The Canadian superstar received 88 of the 100 potential first-place votes for a total of 958 points.
Wembanyama, who has touted his own MVP credentials a couple times in recent weeks, was in second place with eight first-place votes and 644 total points. Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, who has either won or finished second in MVP voting in each of the past five seasons, was in third with 500 points.
The only other player to receive a first-place vote was Celtics wing Jaylen Brown, who received one and was in fifth place with 123 points. Lakers guard Luka Doncic was fourth with 347 points.
Of course, the bigger concern for the Spurs is the health of their best player as they look to make a deep playoff run. Wembanyama has also been battling right ankle pain the past few weeks, though that injury evidently doesn’t bother him all the time.
Lakers’ Redick Defends Decision To Play Doncic, Reaves In Blowout
The Lakers‘ season took an unfortunate turn last Thursday as Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves were injured during a 134-96 loss to Oklahoma City. Speaking with reporters before Sunday’s game at Dallas, head coach JJ Redick explained his decision to use both players in the second half with the team trailing by a wide margin, per Dan Woike of The Athletic.
Doncic was diagnosed on Friday with a Grade 2 left hamstring strain that could sideline him for a month or more. He plans to seek treatment in Europe in hopes of making a faster recovery. On Saturday, the Lakers learned that Reaves will miss four-to-six weeks with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury.
Redick said internal medical data didn’t show any signs that Doncic was being overused heading into Thursday. He grabbed at his left hamstring at one point in the first half, but received medical clearance to go back into the game. He suffered the injury early in the third quarter after planting his left leg and again reached for his hamstring.
Reaves experienced a tweak in his left side during the first half of Thursday’s game and went to the locker room to have it checked. He returned in the third quarter and appeared to aggravate the initial injury.
“As a coach, you go on the information you have,” Redick said. “He was medically cleared. When Austin came back, I asked directly. I thought he was hurt. (I was told), ‘No, he’s medically cleared.’ The group wanted to go for it in the second half. Talked about it at halftime. And I think, for both those guys, the nature of playing heavy minutes, that’s certainly a part of, like any equation when you’re trying to manage workloads. We also rely on the tracking data, and we’re looking at that after every game. You know, acceleration, jumps, workload, all of those things.
“And there have been a few times this year where it’s gone, away from the standard deviation of whatever their baseline is, and we make the proper adjustments. There was nothing leading into that game that would suggest either those guys were ‘running hot,’ as we call it.”
Redick also talked about the need to “extend the season” so Doncic and Reaves can return at some point in the playoffs. L.A. is currently tied with Denver at 50-28 and holds the tie-breaker for the No. 3 seed in the West, but a challenging schedule lies ahead with games this week against Oklahoma City, Golden State, Phoenix and Utah.
The Lakers got their first look at what life is going to be like in the meantime in Sunday’s loss to the Mavericks, per Dave McMenamin and Shams Charania of ESPN. L.A. gave up 41 points in the first quarter and trailed by 22 at one point before rallying to make the game close.
They used a starting lineup of LeBron James, Luke Kennard, Deandre Ayton, Rui Hachimura and Jake LaRavia that had never played together before Sunday. McMenamin and Charania note that the group that started the second quarter – James, Jarred Vanderbilt, Jaxson Hayes, Maxi Kleber and Kobe Bufkin – was also playing together for the first time.
James talked about the shock of finding out about Reaves’ absence in the wake of Doncic’s injury.
“I took my nap after practice, and I woke up with that news, it was like another shot to the [head],” James said. “It was a shot to the heart, obviously, and to the chest and to the mainframe with Luka. … But we kind of got that news kind of quick, and AR … we knew he was going to get an MRI, but I woke up from my nap yesterday and then saw that news, and I was like, ‘S–t.’ That was literally my tone.”
James took on a larger role with the other two stars sidelined, but the Lakers are going to be careful not to overuse him for the rest of the regular season, according to Khobi Price of The California Post. He finished with 30 points, nine rebounds and 15 assists in 39 minutes – marking just his sixth 30-point game of the season, along with his highest assist total of 2025/26.
“We did enough intentionally to get him sort of out of actions and not have him involved in every single play when he was out there,” Redick said. “And then there were times when he would get an outlet pass or get the ball and just kind of manipulated the half-court set for us and we got some good stuff.”
Luka Doncic To Seek Treatment In Europe
Lakers guard Luka Doncic will travel to Europe to get medical treatment on his hamstring strain in an attempt to speed up his recovery process, agent Bill Duffy tells Shams Charania of ESPN. The decision was made after conversations with Doncic’s medical team and the team’s medical staff.
Doncic was diagnosed with a Grade 2 hamstring strain on Friday and was ruled out for the rest of the regular season. Though the Lakers didn’t provide a specific timeline for his recovery, outside medical experts have noted that a three-to-six week timeline is typical for such injuries.
Doncic is hoping to either beat that timeline or at least return on the early end of it. While the Lakers aren’t likely to fall further than No. 5 in the Western Conference before the end of the regular season, they’re suddenly quite thin in the backcourt heading into the first round of the playoffs, with Austin Reaves recently ruled out for four-to-six weeks due to an oblique injury.
“Both those guys are going to try to come back, and it’s our job to extend the season so that they can come back,” Lakers head coach JJ Redick said on Sunday of Doncic and Reaves.
Injury Notes: Doncic, Embiid, Sabonis, Smart
With Luka Doncic dealing with a Grade 2 hamstring strain ahead of the postseason, the Lakers find themselves in a difficult position after the star guard led them to a strong second half showing.
Mark Medina of Essentially Sports spoke to three medical experts to get a better sense of the star guard’s injury and recovery outlook. They are Shaheen Jadidi, a primary care sports medicine physician at Endeavor Health, Jesse Morse, a sports medicine physician and non-surgical orthopedic specialist, and Nirav Pandya, a professor at UCSF in orthopedic surgery.
“I’m definitely concerned with a short turnaround,” Pandya said. “In general, these Grade 2 strains usually have a three-to-six-week time frame for players to return from that. When you have a short time period to come back into playoff-level intensity basketball, you really worry about two things. One, can a player come back? Two, even if they come back, how impactful can they be?”
Morse explained what the injury actually means for the layperson and how it impacts Doncic’s recovery.
“Grade 2s are partial tears. Think of a rope just to have a mental visual. A one-inch wide rope is now half-an-inch wide. You’re asking that half-an-inch tendon to do 100% of the work,” he said. “This is a minimum three-week injury, but you have to move mountains to get him back in three weeks. Even if he’s sleeping in hyperbaric chambers, doing stem cells and doing around-the-clock physical therapy in red light, he’s going to be at a very high-risk for reinjury. He’s had other hamstring injuries, so he’ll have a lot of scar tissue. The problem is that scar tissue is weaker and less flexible. Traditionally, that’s what leads to reinjury.”
The three experts went deep into what the rehab process will look like, Doncic’s timeline for return, and expectations for how he’ll play once he resumes on-court activity.
We have more injury news from around the league:
- Joel Embiid will miss the Sixers‘ game against the Pistons on Saturday due to oblique injury management and illness. Embiid played on Friday, but had previously expressed frustration with president of basketball operations Daryl Morey and the rest of the team after he was ruled out for Wednesday’s game due to illness. “I guess these guys decide to let me play or not,” Embiid said when asked about playing on Saturday, per Gina Mizell of The Philadelphia Inquirer (subscriber link). “So whatever they tell me, I guess I got to follow.” Embiid did note that his right oblique, which he strained in February, took a hit in Friday’s game against the Wolves.
- Domantas Sabonis hasn’t suited up for the Kings since February 4 after suffering a left meniscus tear that required season-ending surgery. However, he was in attendance for Friday’s win against the Pelicans, according to Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee, and says that his goal is to return to on-court activity sometime in July (Twitter link). Sabonis told Anderson that he has been on crutches for the past six weeks.
- Lakers guard Marcus Smart will miss his seventh straight game Sunday at Dallas due to a right leg contusion, per Khobi Price of The California Post (Twitter link).
Austin Reaves Out 4-6 Weeks With Oblique Muscle Injury
The Lakers announced that Austin Reaves will miss the remainder of the regular season after being diagnosed with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury, relays Khobi Price of The California Post (Twitter link). Reaves is expected to miss four-to-six weeks, sources tell ESPN’s Shams Charania (Twitter link), which puts his projected return somewhere in the second or third round of the playoffs
Reaves, who left Thursday’s game early, underwent an MRI Saturday in Dallas on his left oblique/rib area, according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
Reaves tweaked something in his left side during the first half of the lopsided loss to Oklahoma City. He went to the locker room to have it checked, but was able to return to the game, finishing with 15 points in 27 minutes before being removed.
“I went back to get a rebound, overextended a little bit, and I felt something,” Reaves told reporters after the game. “But I feel decent right now, so we’ll see.”
McMenamin adds that Reaves had to get two MRIs done because the first one didn’t focus on the correct portion of his body.
“I don’t know where the chain of command lies with Dallas imaging, but they scanned the wrong area,” coach JJ Redick said. “Not on our end.”
It’s another devastating blow for the Lakers after Luka Doncic was diagnosed Friday with a Grade 2 left hamstring strain that will keep him out for the rest of the season and probably at least the first round of the playoffs.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday before Reaves’ MRI results were announced, Redick said the team is remaining strong in the face of the injuries, and its mission to clinch the No. 3 seed and advance through the first round hasn’t changed. “And we’ll see what happens with Luka,” he added.
Redick plans to expand the scoring responsibilities while Doncic and Reaves are unavailable, mentioning LeBron James, Luke Kennard, Rui Hachimura and Deandre Ayton as players who can expect to see larger roles in the offense.
Since Reaves returned to the lineup in early February, James has mostly settled in as a third option, contributing in other ways while Doncic and Reaves have been the primary play-makers. Over the past seven games, James is averaging 15.6 points, 7.3 rebounds and 7.3 assists. He’s taking just 11.7 shots per game in that span, well below his career average of 18.6.
“You got to flip the mindset a little bit when your role changes, whatever the case may be, or what’s needed out of [you for] the team,” James said. “So the mindset changes a little bit, for sure.”
Veteran guard Marcus Smart, who has missed the past six games with groin and ankle injuries, is now considered day-to-day, McMenamin adds, but he’s not certain to play against Dallas. Smart wasn’t able to fully participate in Saturday’s practice.
Redick plans to finish the season with an “all hands on deck approach,” stretching his normal rotation from nine to possibly 11 players. He stated that Kobe Bufkin, Nick Smith Jr. and Dalton Knecht will all join the team after participating in the G League playoffs Sunday night with the South Bay Lakers.
The injuries make L.A.’s hold on the third spot in the West somewhat tenuous after it looked solid earlier in the week. The Lakers currently have a one-game lead over Denver and a two-game cushion over Houston. After Sunday’s contest, they’ll host Oklahoma City on Tuesday, travel to Golden State on Thursday and then finish the season with home games against Phoenix on Friday and Utah on Sunday.
Luka Doncic Diagnosed With Grade 2 Left Hamstring Strain
Lakers guard Luka Doncic has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 left hamstring strain after undergoing an MRI, the team announced on Friday (Twitter link via Khobi Price of The California Post).
While the Lakers formally ruled Doncic out for the rest of the regular season, they didn’t give any indication how much time he might miss beyond that. The average return timetable for a Grade 2 hamstring strain is 35 days, tweets Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes.
If Doncic, who leads the NBA in points per game, is out over a month, he could miss the entire first round of the playoffs. The full postseason schedule has yet to be released, but the first round begins on April 18.
Los Angeles clinched a playoff spot earlier this week and is currently the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference. The Lakers will have to lean heavily on Austin Reaves and LeBron James for scoring and play-making as they look to advance in the postseason.
Doncic appeared to tweak his hamstring with about a minute left in the second quarter of Thursday’s game in Oklahoma City, then pulled up lame on a drive in the third quarter. The Lakers were down 38 points at the time and wound up losing by 43.
Although it’s obviously of lesser importance compared to the Lakers being without their best player, there’s an “extraordinary circumstances challenge” in the Collective Bargaining Agreement that could still allow Doncic to qualify for major postseason awards, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. The superstar guard would have to file an application and have it approved by an “independent expert,” but he appears to have a strong case based on the CBA language, Marks notes (via Twitter).
Doncic is currently at 64 appearances and needed to play one more contest to meet the 65-game requirement. However, he missed two games to travel to Slovenia for the birth of his child, and seems to meet the criteria listed in the CBA:
- It was impracticable for the player to play in one or more of the game(s) he missed due to extraordinary circumstances.
- The player would have played in at least 65 regular season games if he had played every game that he missed due to the extraordinary circumstances.
- As a result of the extraordinary circumstances, and taking into account the totality of the circumstances (including whether the player did not play in other regular season games in which he could have played), it would be unjust to exclude the player from award eligibility.
Doncic would have a 24-hour window in which to apply for the challenge, starting at 12:00 pm ET on the final day of the regular season (April 12). His agent Billy Duffy confirmed to Shams Charania of ESPN that he plans to fill out the application on behalf of his client (Twitter link).
If he is granted eligibility by the arbitrator, Doncic is a top contender to make his fifth first-team All-NBA appearance in six years. He averaged 33.5 points, 8.3 assists, 7.7 rebounds and 1.6 steals in 35.8 minutes per game, with a shooting line of .476/.366/.780.