The NBA’s new 65-game rule for award eligibility has come under a lot of scrutiny, and we’ve seen star players pushing to hit the threshold down the stretch of the season. But one player who hasn’t had to worry about that limit at all is Jaylen Brown.
JB has been an iron man this year, leading the Celtics with consistency and durability on a nightly basis and establishing himself as one of the best players in the entire league. His reliability has been a huge contributing factor to his value, and since he flew past 70 games played and led the Cs to a stunning 2-seed in the East, he should be a lock to make first-team All-NBA for the first time in his career.
However, given the NBA’s latest ruling on Thursday, his “lock” status has suddenly come into question. Multiple players filed appeals to the league on the grounds of “extraordinary circumstances” after falling just short of the 65-game rule, and the league has inexplicably chosen to honor the requests, granting awards eligibility to Luka Doncic and Cade Cunningham.
NBA ruling on Doncic and Cunningham is a joke
Sure, I feel for Luka and Cade, who have each had great seasons, but at the end of the day, the rules are the rules, and they did not reach the limit. Apparently, Luka won his appeal because he missed two games for the birth of his child. That’s certainly a worthy reason to miss games, but I’m sure it’s an “extraordinary circumstance”.
Furthermore, he still missed another 16 games for non-extraordinary reasons, including missing a game recently due to suspensions for accumulating too many technical fouls.
Cunningham’s circumstances are unfortunate, as he missed double-digit games with a collapsed lung, but it’s an injury that occurred on the court, and caused him to miss too many games. Clearly, the league doesn’t actually care about the rule and has shown that they’re quick to make exceptions that fly in the face of their own standards.
Brown may lose his first-team All-NBA spot
This impacts the Celtics because now that these two are eligible, Cade and Luka are likely to be voted onto the first-team All-NBA. Considering Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, and Victor Wembanyama are already penciled in, that means there’s now a great chance that Brown gets squeezed out and ends up on the second team.
That would just be a ridiculously unfair and undeserved outcome, as Brown has done everything asked of him, but will probably get passed over for two guys who have not. It’s not right, and JB is a victim of this egregious decision, even though he has embodied exactly what the league claims to want from star players.
If there’s some good news, based on past history, this should only make the chip on Jaylen’s shoulder even bigger and will likely add even more fuel to his fire for the playoffs. Last time he was snubbed from an All-NBA team, he went out and won ECF and Finals MVP.
We know he gets inspired by perceived slights, and this will absolutely qualify. Hopefully, we get a repeat of 2024, and JB goes out in the playoffs and shows the league what a mistake they’ve made, by taking home some much more important hardware in June.
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