OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Luka Don\u010di\u0107 has a pathway to end-of-season award eligibility despite falling short of the minimum games threshold, and his agent plans to take it.<\/p>\n
Don\u010di\u0107 injured his hamstring<\/a> in the third quarter of Thursday night\u2019s game at Oklahoma City. It was his 64th game of the season, and when the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday announced<\/a> the injury would keep him out for the rest of the regular season, it guaranteed Don\u010di\u0107 would fall short of the NBA\u2019s 65-game threshold to be eligible for key postseason awards such as Most Valuable Player and all-NBA.<\/p>\n But in a statement acquired by The Athletic on Friday, Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s agent, Bill Duffy of WME Basketball, said Don\u010di\u0107 plans to appeal for an \u201cExtraordinary Circumstances Challenge,\u201d an option that is included in the NBA\u2019s 65-game participation policy. The policy allows players to appeal if they meet a series of factors that include \u201cextraordinary circumstances\u201d where \u201cit was impracticable for him to play in one or more of the Regular Season game(s) that he missed during such Season.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLuka has gone to great lengths to show up for his team and this league this season,\u201d Duffy\u2019s statement read, in part. \u201cHis record-breaking season deserves to be noted in the history books, despite last night\u2019s unfortunate injury and other extraordinary circumstances. We look forward to working with the NBAPA and the league office to ensure a fair outcome in this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Duffy pointed to two games Don\u010di\u0107 missed in Toronto and Boston on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5 to return to Slovenia for the birth of his second daughter. The Lakers\u2019 star rejoined his team on Dec. 7 in Philadelphia. Had he played in both the Toronto and Boston games, Don\u010di\u0107 would\u2019ve played in 85.7 percent of the Lakers\u2019 games up to and including Thursday\u2019s in Oklahoma City \u2014 clearing the threshold for award eligibility.<\/p>\n According to the policy, the Lakers and Don\u010di\u0107 can file for the exception starting on the final day of the regular season, then have until the next day to formally submit it. Should a \u201cchallenge expert,\u201d chosen jointly by the NBA and NBPA rule in his favor, \u201cthe sole remedy shall be that the player is deemed eligible for the Applicable Generally Recognized League Honors.\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u010di\u0107 also would have reached 65 games had he not received a mandatory one-game suspension following his 16th technical foul last week, which caused him to miss the Lakers\u2019 win against Washington on Monday.<\/p>\n Don\u010di\u0107 is averaging 33.5 points, 7.7 rebounds and 8.3 assists per game this season for the Lakers, leading the league in scoring while positioning himself as one of the top MVP candidates along with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Joki\u0107. He was considered a favorite for his sixth first-team All-NBA spot after leading the Lakers to a 50-win season before his injury.<\/p>\n He\u2019s the only Western Conference player to win Player of the Month honors twice this season, earning the award in January and March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Luka Don\u010di\u0107 has a pathway to end-of-season award eligibility despite falling short of the minimum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,150,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-696801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","10":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}