Despite being ruled eligible for the award through the Extraordinary Circumstances Challenge, Luka Dončić was not named a finalist on Sunday for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award.
The three finalists for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama.
While we’ll get to SGA and Jokić, the most legitimate
complaint is Wemby’s inclusion over Luka. While Wemby is a generational superstar on the cusp of taking over the league, he’s also someone who played 400 fewer minutes than Luka, who needed an exception to even be ruled eligible for consideration.
At a certain point, minutes played has to matter.
The Spurs were extra careful with Wemby throughout the season, which they’re entitled to do. However, it should also come with consequences, especially compared to players who took on heavier burdens for their teams and performed as well or better.
To that point, there is not a player more valuable to their team than either Luka or Jokić. This becomes a semantic debate about the name of the award being Most Valuable Player and not something like Most Outstanding Player. By definition, Luka is more valuable to the Lakers than SGA is to the Thunder or Wemby is to the Spurs.
However, that also isn’t how voters have treated the award basically ever, so that point is more moot and not really worth arguing.
At the end of the day, Luka was one of the three most valuable players to his team. He had a fantastic season. He actually played heavy minutes. He carried a team. That should warrant him finishing in the top three in voting at the very least.
But I guess he needed to campaign his way into being a finalist like other players.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
