An NBA regular season that is very much NOT finishing with a flourish

The NBA’s 80th season — at least the regular season portion — is skidding to a dispiriting end.

Thursday was particularly dour. The East-leading Pistons announced that Cade Cunningham will be sidelined for at least one more week by a collapsed lung, ensuring that Cunningham cannot appear in the requisite 65 regular-season games needed for MVP and All-NBA consideration. The Timberwolves then ruled Anthony Edwards out of a road loss to the Cade-less Pistons because of an ongoing knee issue (plus an illness) after Edwards rushed back Monday night in Dallas to try to maintain his MVP and All-NBA eligibility. Ant-Man is also now unable to reach 65 games played.

Social media graphics posted Thursday by ESPN.

Then NBA scoring leader Luka Dončić sustained a scary-looking hamstring injury Thursday night in the Lakers’ humbling loss at Oklahoma City. Dončić was grabbing at his hamstring in the first half and could have been shelved for the second half given that the game was already out of hand. Instead? The 43-point rout brought a jarring end to the Lakers’ recent 15-2 surge — coming just hours after Dončić was named Player of the Month in the West in recognition of his monstrous March — and has naturally sparked fears that the West’s No. 3 seed suddenly won’t have its best player available when the playoffs begin April 18. The injury, furthermore, will almost certainly leave Luka stuck on 64 games played in 2025-26.

Which means that the NBA’s likely scoring champion, like Cunningham and Edwards, cannot appear on an All-NBA team unless Dončić can win an appeal to the league office regarding his status.

As noted above via Twitter by Mavericks play-by-play ace Mark Followill, only two players in league history have led the league in scoring and failed to earn All-NBA honors. Elvin Hayes was the first in 1968-69, when he averaged 28.4 points for the San Diego Rockets as a rookie and even lost out on Rookie of the Year honors to his future Washington Bullets teammate Wes Unseld … who was named MVP and Rookie of the Year in his maiden pro season. It happened again in 1975-76 to Bob McAdoo from my beloved Buffalo Braves; Doo finished second in the MVP race to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in voting by their fellow players even though Kareem’s Lakers missed the playoffs entirely … only for Abdul-Jabbar and Boston’s Dave Cowens to earn the center slots on the two (rather than three) All-NBA teams selected in those days.

The subject of player availability, mind you, doesn’t merely involve those three stars. Six of this season’s 10 highest-paid players, on top of the Cunningham/Edwards/Dončić triumvirate, have already fallen short of the 65 games needed to be eligible for selection as the NBA’s MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player as well as All-NBA or All-Defensive Team recognition.

Six.

And that list would stretch seven if Denver’s Nikola Jokić misses one more game, which would put him in an unwanted club that already features Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, Boston’s Jayson Tatum, Washington’s Anthony Davis and the Golden State duo of Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler.

All of above has dominated leaguewide discussion since the calendar flipped to April … but only after what could justifiably be classified as the least competitive March that the NBA has ever witnessed. In the latest of his wonderfully handy monthly statistical roundups, Justin Kubatko illuminated the alarming number of blowout scores we’re seeing in a season that features at least eight teams that have been tanking for weeks (if not longer) in advance of June’s hugely anticipated draft.

An excerpt from Kubatko’s March summary:

Across the NBA, 145 games were decided by 10 or more points, 97 games were decided by 15 or more points, 67 games were decided by 20 or more points, 42 games were decided by 25 or more points and 24 games were decided by 30 or more points. All are the highest such totals in a single month in league history.

The full piece:

Plus …

To update a stat brought to my attention at the start of the week by Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, 84 games this season have been decided by 30 points or more. That’s a new league record after last season’s 80.

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps notes that there might be a pathway, in the end, for Dončić to gain award eligibility:

As for everything else …

I’ll repeat here what I’ve been saying on Sirius XM NBA Radio and various podcasts for weeks: Are we sure that this is the right time for the NBA to be chasing its NBA Europe ambitions and domestic expansion when this season has presented so many pressing challenges that need addressing as opposed to focusing on growth?

The challenges, remember, started piling up even before training camps opened through allegations of salary cap circumvention against the LA Clippers … followed by a federal gambling probe that led to Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups being placed on indefinite leave just one game into Portland’s season. Resolutions on those situations are still pending while the NBA also hopes to cement lottery reforms in May that would go into effect next season to try to curb all the tanking (and Tanking Talk) out there.

A season can’t be properly judged before its postseason, true, but it seems more than safe to suggest that the 82-game portion of the 2025-26 campaign that played out over the past six months won’t be remembered with much fondness.

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.As a reminder: Tuesday editions on this and every Newsletter Tuesday go out free to anyone who signs up … just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation. Unless, that is, they are shifted to Friday like this one.

Thanks for reading The Stein Line! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share The Stein Line

For my recent breakdown of the Dallas Mavericks’ GM search and the league’s front office landscape in general:

And for Jake Fischer’s latest compilation of NBA Draft buzz:

Recent declarations of note via Substack Notes: