SAN ANTONIO — Victor Wembanyama has now qualified for postseason NBA awards after returning from a left rib contusion to score 40 points and grab 13 rebounds in 26 minutes Friday against the Dallas Mavericks.

The Spurs’ 7-foot-4 superstar was at risk of falling a game short of the 65-game minimum when he suffered a rib injury colliding with Paul George in the second quarter of Monday’s win over the Philadelphia 76ers. He sat out Wednesday’s win over the Portland Trail Blazers but planned to return Friday if his pregame warmup went smoothly. Wembanyama managed to cross the 20-minute threshold required for the game to count for eligibility in the third quarter.

While this game marks Wembanyama’s 64th regular-season contest, his appearance in the NBA Cup final counts for award eligibility even if it doesn’t appear in his official season statistics.

After the game, Wembanyama opined on the veracity of the 65-game rule, going through the list of players who will miss it while recognizing how much their absenses could dampen the legacy of the season. Cade Cunningham, Luka Dončić (pending appeal) and Anthony Edwards are all short of the threshold.

“In my opinion, it’s good to have a threshold, a limit,” he said. “Where do we need to put it? I don’t know. It’s a good question.”

Luckily for Wembanyama, he was in a room full of reporters who have mulled this over. He had a mic in his hand, so he decided it was his time to take control of the news conference.

“Let me ask you a question,” Wembanyama said. “What percentage of the season do you think should be the limit?”

Reporters tossed out various numbers, ranging from two-thirds to 80 percent of the season. That’s when Wembanyama started to break things down.

“If a guy plays 50 games, 35 minutes a game, that’s 50 times 35, that’s 1,750, right? Am I right?” Wembanyama said. “If a guy plays 75 games at 20 minutes, it’s 1,500. So, it’s a good view, in my opinion, to not have a limit. It’s one opinion. Seventy-five percent of the games, in my opinion, would be a logical thing, and that would be 61.5 games, right? So 62 games.”

At that moment, a reporter told Wembanyama that all of his math checks out as laughter began.

“Of course, the alien gets all of it right,” another said as Wembanyama laughed.

“So, there’s some interesting questions,” Wembanyama continued. “But I think, obviously, I don’t think there’s going to be an exception made for this year. I think it’d be somewhat unfair, but we’ll see how it turns out.”

Wembanyama would have been incredibly frustrated if he didn’t meet the threshold, but he seemed to appreciate the value in pushing players to show up as much as they can. And as much as he has valued the regular season, his excitement for the playoffs approaching was apparent. The Spurs (62-19) will have the No. 2 seed and play the winner of Tuesday’s first West Play-In tournament game.

“It’s becoming more real, more and more real, that we are actually going to play in the playoffs,” Wembanyama said. “I’m excited to play in high-stakes games again. … Elimination games and such always reveal things.”

If this is in fact his final regular season game — he hinted he may sit out Sunday’s game against Denver — he has started and ended his season with 40-point outings against the Dallas Mavericks.

Wembanyama recorded his third 40-point game while playing less than 30 minutes this season. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are the only players to have such a game multiple times in their careers, while Phoenix Suns wing Grayson Allen is the only other player to do it in the NBA this season.

Wembanyama is the consensus favorite for Defensive Player of the Year, is expected to make first-team All-NBA and is one of the top contenders for the MVP award. He has campaigned for the MVP, most notably when he debated The Athletic over why he should win MVP over Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

“My first one would be that defense is 50 percent of the game and that is undervalued, so far, in the MVP race,” Wembanyama said when asked for his three campaign talking points. “I believe I’m the most impactful player defensively in the league. Second argument would be that we almost swept OKC in the season and we dominated them three times with their real team and four times with the, you know, more rotation players. My third argument would be that offense impact is not just points.”

However, in The Athletic’s anonymous NBA player poll, 39 percent of polled players voted for Gilgeous-Alexander to win the award, whereas only 5 percent voted for Wembanyama. A straw poll of 100 media members by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps found that Gilgeous-Alexander had a sizable lead in MVP voting over Wembanyama, receiving 88 of 100 first-place votes.

The Spurs’ third-year center was averaging 24.8 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 3.1 blocks per game entering Friday.