How Luka Dončić's Appeal of NBA’s 65-Game Rule Could Cost Kon Knueppel Rookie of the Year

Kon Knueppel struggled in the Hornets’ play-in win over the Heat. | Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images

If you're still trying to decide who you're voting for NBA MVP this season, you might not be alone. In past years NBA awards balloting would be over by now, but because players like Luka Dončić and Cade Cunningham have made appeals to the league under their “extraordinary circumstances” exception regarding the 65-game eligibility rule, voters haven't even been given access to their ballots yet, as noted by Marc Stein.

Waiting a few extra days wouldn't be a big deal except there are games being played while voters wait. And now regular season awards may be being influenced by what is happening in the play-in games, even though they should not be because, again, these are regular season awards.

If you skip to the four-minute mark of the latest episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast you can hear Simmons and Kirk Goldsberry, another awards voter from The Ringer, discuss how watching Deni Avdija's 41-point performance on Tuesday made Simmons decide he's going to move him onto the All-NBA third team. And Goldsberry seemed to agree with the move while noting that the play-in may have affected Kon Knueppel's shot at Rookie of the Year the opposite way.

“I’ll tell you this much,” said Simmons. “We aren’t allowed to do this, but I’m gonna do it. We argued about the last third-team spot in All-NBA much later in the podcast and I said I was gonna give it to Scottie Barnes. And that I couldn’t quite get there with Deni because he barely played enough games and all that stuff. But after watching tonight, Kirk, I’m just gonna change my vote.”

“The NBA’s doing this to us or for us," Goldsberry added. "I'm not sure, but they've given us another set of games to reevaluate our choices. To rethink things. Traditionally, our votes would’ve been due by now, instead we're watching Kon Knueppel, we’ll get to there, but Deni obviously playing one of the games of the year for him and making us rethink where he should be in these awards."

Trail Blazers star Deni Avdija’s incredible game Tuesday isn’t supposed to factor into his candidacy for All-NBA and other awards, but voters still haven’t cast their ballots. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

So someone like Scottie Barnes might now lose out on All-NBA honors because Deni Avdija was so awesome in a single, high-stakes game that Barnes had nothing to do with. And while voters are not supposed to take the play-in into consideration ... can you blame them? The games are happening and they still haven’t turned in their votes yet. Recency bias is a very human thing and with everyone watching these games like the NBA wants, it has to be difficult to ignore it.

As Goldsberry mentioned, there could be some reconsideration headed Kon Knueppel’s way as well. The Hornets rookie struggled in Charlotte’s win over the Heat. Knueppel, who set an NBA rookie record by making 273 three-pointers this season, went 0-for-6 from behind the arc on Tuesday and after averaging 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists a game this season he managed just six points, five rebounds and one assist before he was benched in favor of Coby White with 1:42 remaining in regulation.

With the Hornets needing a three with 12.9 seconds remaining, Knueppel, who made 42.5% of the 7.9 three-pointers he attempted per game this season, remained on the bench. Instead, White played the hero and sent it to overtime while Knueppel never saw the floor in the extra period.

Knueppel is in what should be a very tight race with his former Duke teammate Cooper Flagg for Rookie of the Year. The counting stats favor Flagg while the advanced numbers lean towards Knueppel. The Hornets made the play-in and the Mavericks actually went backwards from a year ago. Flagg met expectations while Knueppel exceded them.

But now he had a very bad performance in a standalone game on Prime Video with his team’s playoff chances on the line after being hidden on League Pass for the majority of the season. It's a tough look and in past years it wouldn't make a difference because the ballots would have already been turned in. The NBA is now asking voters to pretend the entire game was played behind the technical difficulties graphic.

Maybe voters watching the play-in games won't end up changing a single result, even though it sounds like at least one of the ballots was most definitely influenced by them. Everyone knows these are regular season awards so most people will still vote based only on what they saw during the regular season.

Whatever happens, the league might want to decide who is and isn't eligible so people can vote.

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