Luka Doncic is eligible for 2025-26 annual awards, the NBA and NBAPA agreed under the extraordinary circumstances provision.
Detroit’s Cade Cunningham is now also eligible. Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards remains ineligible.
Getty
Anthony Edwards will not be eligible for NBA awards this year.
Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards has been denied his Extraordinary Circumstances Challenge for the 65-game rule.
Edwards filed the challenge following the season after he played in 60 qualified games, missing the cut for the 65-game rule. However, Edwards’ challenge was denied, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, who noted that the NBA and NBPA ruled in favor of both Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic and Detroit Pistons stud Cade Cunningham when it came to overriding the 65-game rule for extraordinary circumstances.
Doncic missed 2 games in December due to the birth of his child abroad and Cunningham had a collapsed lung. Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards filed a challenge as well and his case was advanced to an independent arbitrator, but was denied and is not eligible for awards, sources said. https://t.co/BfkiQH2f2e
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 16, 2026
“Doncic missed 2 games in December due to the birth of his child abroad and Cunningham had a collapsed lung. Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards filed a challenge as well and his case was advanced to an independent arbitrator, but was denied and is not eligible for awards, sources said,” wrote Charania on X.
Since Edwards missed out on the 65 games and was denied his Extraordinary Circumstances Challenge, he will be ineligible for all NBA awards. That means he won’t be placed on one of the three All-NBA teams, though he would have been a lock had he won his challenge after he averaged 28.8 points per game this season for the Timberwolves, while leading them to the playoffs once again.
Edwards is one of the NBA’s premier scorers, and he made it to the All-NBA second team the last two years due to his phenomenal performances. But he played in 79 games the last two years, easily eclipsing the 65-game threshold for NBA awards consideration, a rule that began during the 2023-2024 season.
The rule was designed so that superstar players would not sit out games, particularly after their teams had playoff seeds locked up. But due to the intensity and physicality of the current NBA landscape, the 65-game rule has come under fire as being too high for the players. To that end, stars such as Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic barely qualified for the rule, as both men played in exactly 65 games this season. Had there been no 65-game rule in place, both players likely would have played fewer games as their teams would have rested them for load management reasons in an attempt to keep them healthy for the playoffs.
While Edwards’ challenge was denied, both Doncic and Cunningham won their challenges for the 65-game rule. That means both players will now be eligible for NBA awards, and both men are likely to be placed on the All-NBA first team after Doncic led the entire league in scoring and Cunningham led the Pistons to the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Luka Doncic is eligible for 2025-26 annual awards, the NBA and NBAPA agreed under the extraordinary circumstances provision.
Detroit’s Cade Cunningham is now also eligible. Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards remains ineligible.
Because Doncic and Cunningham will now make All-NBA, that means bubble players for the All-NBA teams, like Scottie Barnes of the Toronto Raptors, Jalen Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks, and Karl-Anthony Towns of the New York Knicks, will now have a much tougher time making the All-NBA teams, as there will be two fewer spots available since Doncic and Cunningham are locks for them.
Adam Martin Adam Martin is a sports journalist with over 15 years of experience. He has a speciality in MMA, while also covering the Big 4 Sports. Adam is currently a contributor to Heavy.com, with previous experience working for The Toronto Star, Sportsnet, theScore, Bookies, BJPenn.com, and MMAOddsbreaker.com. More about Adam Martin
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。