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Cade Cunningham and Luka Dončić will be awards eligible after all.
On Thursday, the NBA and NBPA ruled in favor of both players’ Extraordinary Circumstance Challenges to the league’s 65-game award rule, allowing both to be on the All-NBA teams and on the MVP ballot.
“The NBA and NBPA agreed that, taking into account the totality of the circumstances for Cunningham and Dončić, each player qualified for awards,” the league and the union said in a statement.
Cunningham played in 64 games before missing 12 due to a collapsed lung while Dončić played in 63 and missed two games in December for the birth of a child overseas, both of which fit the league’s criteria for an exception.
“I am grateful to the NBPA for advocating on my behalf and to the NBA for their fair decision,” Dončić posted to X on Thursday. “It was so important to me to be present for the birth of my daughter in December, and I appreciate Mark, Jeanie, Rob, JJ, and the entire Lakers organization for fully supporting me and allowing me to travel to be there.
“This season has been so special to me because of what my teammates and I have been able to accomplish, and I am honored to have the opportunity to be considered for the league’s end-of-season awards.”
The 65-game participation policy was part of the league’s 2023 CBA, which imposed a game requirement for postseason eligibility. Cunningham and Dončić were the first two players to contest their eligibility (or lack thereof) through the Extraordinary Circumstance Challenges. The possibility of both players being ineligible led many voices around the NBA to call for the rule to be changed, but commissioner Adam Silver has been hesitant to do so.
“I’m not ready, standing here, to say I don’t think it’s working,” Silver said in March. “I think it is working. I think if you look at the numbers, the pre-implementation of this rule, numbers were going in the wrong direction. I may have this a little bit off, I think the three years before we adopted this rule, almost a third of the All-NBA players had not played 80% of the games. That was a huge issue for the league. … But I’m not ready to say standing here today, that because there may be a sense of unfairness for one player, that that means the rule doesn’t work.”
Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards, who played in 60 games this season, unsuccessfully challenged his own eligibility. The 2025-26 NBA regular season saw injuries to several star players, with Edwards, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Stephen Curry among those ineligible for awards due to the 65-game rule.
