OKLAHOMA CITY — As the NBA’s regular season winds down, the awards debates are in full swing. But unlike the simple arguments about who is the most dominant force in the game, the talk of late has been about who should be eligible for the awards.
The chatter particularly arose when Detroit’s Cade Cunningham suffered a collapsed lung against Washington in a March 17 game, departing in the first quarter after playing just over five minutes in his 61st game of the season. If he doesn’t return before the final five games — that last game he played in doesn’t count toward the 65-game standard because he didn’t meet the requirement of playing at least 15 minutes — he will be ineligible for postseason honors.
Cunningham was a long shot for the Most Valuable Player award anyway, although he likely would have been a first-team All-NBA selection. While he has a legitimate injury, he missed seven games before this injury, and if he is stuck at 60 qualifying games, that means he will have missed more than a quarter of the season.
“I mean, of course you want to do what’s best for the players,” said Karl-Anthony Towns, who is a vice president with the NBA Players Association. “I remember back in the day, the 65, I wasn’t on the board. I was just a player. Obviously, 65 games was because we were all upset, media included. Y’all were upset that people weren’t playing as many games as you would like. We tried to force people, their hand, to play.
“We wanted to make sure players have responsibility and accountability in what their endeavors are and their goals are. Now it seems to be a problem. It’s fun. We continuously listen to the fans, we listen to the players. We try to do what’s best for everybody and also the business of basketball. It’s shown a bad side of it. We’ll step back and take a look at it and we’ll see what we can do to help everyone and make it a compromise where the fans know that we’re trying to play and also the players are taken care of.”
Josh Hart, who led the NBA in minutes played per game last season, said, “This is one of those, like, I get it, but whenever you make a rule, there’s always going to be certain situations where a rule is going to be a detriment to certain guys and an advantage to certain guys.
“Obviously, in this situation, it’s a disadvantage to Cade if he can’t get back and play. He’s someone who should be probably first-team All-NBA, and if not, for sure second team. So it’s unfortunate. But things, when you’re changing rules, when people are doing load managements, a lot of it is our fault, the players’ fault, for not playing and sitting. It’s unfortunate. That’s the one thing about rules — it comes with advantages and disadvantages.”
Cunningham is not the lone player affected by the rule. LeBron James will see his streak of 21 consecutive seasons on an All-NBA team come to an end. Nikola Jokic can miss one more game and Victor Wembanyama can miss two; both have legitimate cases for the MVP award.
Towns said he understands the debate and the frustration. He also understands why the issue had to be addressed. He already has surpassed the 65-game threshold this season, playing in his 69th game on Thursday — one of six Knicks on target to reach the number (Mo Diawara already has been in 63 games, but many don’t meet the minutes requirement).
The secret?
“Heart, willingness, wanting to play,” Towns said. “Really, that’s it at the end of the day. I damn sure haven’t felt my best all year, all day. But I want to play. I love playing. I do believe in the philosophy that there may, especially at MSG with how expensive the tickets are, there may be a family or a young kid who has saved up all his money to watch me play that one night, and for me not to be available would be disrespectful to that kid and to that family. As long as I can play, I’m going to be out there playing, hopefully give that kid a show.”
Wake-up call
The Knicks could point to the shooting of the Charlotte Hornets on Thursday night or the frenetic pace the young team plays with as an issue in a loss that ended their seven-game winning streak. But Mike Brown had a clear point that he thought decided the game.
“They just kicked our behinds on the glass,” Brown said. “We need more production on the glass than what we got from a handful of guys. If you’re going to go on the road and let a team outrebound you 43-24 — not even close. 43-24 because we didn’t put bodies on bodies. We didn’t hit first. Their long shots — I keep telling my group, long shots equal long rebounds. And we go to contest [the shot] and we stop on the play.
“We have to do a better job giving multiple efforts: contests, stay in the play and box out. If the shot is missed, a lot of times that ball is coming right back to the shooter. We didn’t do a good job on that. The last two possessions that we got stops and they got offensive rebounds. That happened: we contested, flew by them, stopped and watched, and the ball bounced right back to the shooter. For us to get beat the way that we did on the glass, that can’t happen.”
The 24 rebounds were a season low for the Knicks. The last time they had that few in a game was April 2, 2013, when J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin led them with six each off the bench.
Rookie race
While the Knicks have high hopes for Diawara, the lone rookie on the roster, he won’t be part of the conversation for NBA Rookie of the Year. But the coast to the honor that was expected for Cooper Flagg has shifted, not so much because of Flagg’s play but because of how well his college suitemate, Kon Knueppel, has played. The Knicks got a close-up look at that as Knueppel had 26 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists for the Hornets on Thursday.
Asked if Knueppel looked like a rookie, Hart said, “Oh, no. I think he probably should be Rookie of the Year. He’s a really good player in terms of how he gets to his shots. He doesn’t force things. He plays in rhythm. He plays with good pace. So I don’t think he looked like a rookie probably 20, 30 games ago. He’s a good young one.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.