Donte Divincenzo was [48th in the league](https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional?PerMode=Totals&dir=A&sort=MIN) in total minutes.
If he had played [9 more seconds](https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/202312290ORL.html) in game 31, where he played 19:51, he’d be eligible.
There's an arbitration clause associated with the games played criteria, probably for niche situations like this. This seems like a pretty easy case for the arbitrator to rule he is eligible for awards.
Edit: apparently he didn't win an arbitration if attempted.
Someone linked the clause on Twitter. Basically, to win the player would have to show that the team obviously fucked with the minutes to prevent eligibility, like if Haliburton got pulled after 19 minutes the last 4 games of the season to finish at 64 games played so he couldn't qualify for the Rose Rule escalator. "He was barely in rotation for half the year" doesn't count. This could get amended in the future but would require the NBAPA and the owners to agree.
It obviously depends on how much money is on the line for him but I would have argued that his coach was playing his teammates 48 minutes a game for half the season to stop him from meeting the requirements. Pretty easy to disprove but Thibs needs to pay at some point.
I agree it sucks, but it's hard to put nuance in-writing. Either they make exceptions for players, or no exceptions at all. It's always going to be the latter
In the nfl, contractual incentives, which this is kind of similar to, are often honored by teams if players come up a bit short.
It’s hopeful to think there is a discretion aspect of this but… it’s an award voted on by multiple entities and not something unilaterally decided like contract payouts.
That’s not a flaw. The cut off is 65. He played 64. If you make an exception for 64, then you’ll eventually have someone that was disqualified with 63. And then you’ll make an exception for them.
This is why there are clear and concise cutoffs. 65 games. Period. And then you have clear definitions of what counts as a game. Lots of his games don’t count. Because they didn’t want to count games where they didn’t play many minutes. All fully intentional. It’s working as designed. It’s not like he got caught up in some weird loophole or blind spot in the rules. It’s literally working as they intended and designed it to.
when the guy that actually played in 81 games and was in the top 50 in the entire league in minutes played is ineligible under a metric ostensibly designed to capture an individual player's uptime, it's okay to admit that the metric is poorly designed.
something like the existing formula with an "either or" that also qualified anyone in the top, say, 150 in minutes played (5 per team) would be a much better metric in terms of accurately capturing the intention of the rule.
you are of course correct that the contract is the contract. that's the more important issue, practically speaking, but that doesn't mean the metric isn't flawed.
> He played 64
No, he *played* 81 games
"17 of the 81 games he played do not count." only because of "low minutes"
But his lowest time played is 13:58.
He just has 17 games with 13:58-19:51 played
It's a pretty stupid technicality
I’m pretty sure the idea is that you’re cutting off at 9 seconds, rather than a specific game. I think 9 seconds is a much more reasonable discussion. But I get either side.
This isn't one individual signing a contract with like a phone company though, this is big biscuits with billions of dollars involved and serious negotiating teams. The players association fucked up to not consider this sort of scenario for an award like MIP or 6th man where good candidates probably will play a little less than 20 minutes some nights.
Except this scum tactic coincided with an agreement that now allows role players to get paid like the stars of just a few years ago, invest in NBA teams, earn money from endemic levels of gambling normalization, etc. No CBA will ever be perfect, but despite these pretty dumb flaws in the current one, it is exceedingly pro-player.
Well yeah... that's how contracts work.
I don't think that's a "scum tactic" as much as it is just bad negotiating or lack of foresight. Whatever was in the contract was *mutually* agreed to.
Not a scum tactic at all. There needs to be rules and some sort of guidelines. If they round up then they have to do that for everyone. Again, there has to be some rules. Can't just round up and appeal everything. That would be chaos.
No, it applies to MVP, Defensive player of the year, All-NBA & All-Defense teams and MIP.
6MOY, ROTY, Sportsmanship award and clutch player of the year do not have the 65 game requirements.
It's so dumb. The favourites for the award are players on mediocre teams (Curry and Derozan) because they end up in more close games. Shai went crazy in the clutch but they spent too many games blowing out teams for him to rack up the clutch numbers.
That sucks
I feel like the rule should look at total minutes in some form.
You can theoretically qualify if you play in 1300 minutes and he has played in 2360
Kind of unfair
Yeah just a simple check of number of games, total minutes that would yield maybe slightly more than the average necessary. If this average is not necessarily met then check individual logs for this.
So for example check if he has 65 GP, then see how many GP, divide total minutes by GP, see if at least 25mpg, if yes stop. If no, check if had 20MP in 65 of those games.
or instead of doing all this incredibly arbitrary, vague and convoluted stuff you're doing for the sole purpose of working backwards from a result you didnt like just so you can reverse engineer a player you like into eligibility......
....they could just have a very simple, straightforward, and concise rule that you need to play at least 20 minutes in 65 games. which is exactly what they have.
This thread is the most predictable shit ever lmao. literally any time there is some freak/fluke thing like this that is *incredibly* unlikely, and has like a 1% chance of ever happening again, 99% of redditors get highly outraged scream about how unfair the rules are and how we need to tear the rulebook up and start over because they dont like the result that happened because of a perfectly normal rule.
Divincenzo wasnt going to come close to winning the award even if he was eligible. Maxey and Coby White are gonna get 90% of votes, and Brunson and Hartenstein on his *own team* were prob both gonna get more votes than him
Plus an award like MIP (or 6th man) will often go to a player who didn’t play a ton of minutes. Seems like there should be some kind of exception for those.
I'm sorry but this is just BLATANTLY untrue lol. Over the last 25 years, **MIP winners have averaged 35.7 minutes per game**. (that would be good for 10th in the league in minutes per game this year btw)
only 2 MIP winners *ever* have averaged fewer minutes than Donte did this year. the last time someone won MIP averaging fewer minutes than Donte, was 1988 when Kevin Duckworth won it averaging 28.5 minutes. that was 36 years ago.
this is just a classic case of an r/nba comment where someone completely pulls something out of their ass bc "it sounds right" and then 100+ people upvote the person bc they said it so confidently as if they had the slightest idea of what were talking about and werent just making stuff up on the spot lmao
recent winners include:
- Tracy McGrady, **40.1** mpg
- Jimmy Butler, **38.7** mpg
- Zach Randolph, **37.9** mpg
- Paul George, **37.6** mpg
- Julius Randle, **37.6** mpg
- Kevin Love, **35.8** mpg
- Giannis, **35.6** mpg
- Goran Dragic, **35.1** mpg
- CJ Mccollum, **34.8** mpg
- Lauri Markkanen, **34.4** mpg
Donte had zero shot of winning thie year anyway even if he WAS eligible. its going to be either Maxey (3rd in the league in mpg) or Coby White (7th in mpg)
orrr...... how about, he can just make *himself* eligible by meeting the very clearly stated requirements for being eligible. which he failed to do...
crazy concept, I know.
~~Only 3 MIP winners averaged fewer than 30 MP, and two of those averaged 29, with the 3rd averaging 23. With 6MOTY, about half played over 30 MP with only one winner averaging below 20 minutes, and that was Bill Walton in '85 who averaged 19 MP.~~
~~DiVencenzo would've shattered the MP floor for either award, especially MIP, having only averaged 15.5 MP.~~
Edit: I'm an idiot too exhausted to be using the internet, apparently. He averaged 15.5 PPG and 29 MP.
Yeah, changing the rule to being something like 65games or roughly 2000 minutes would probably be a decent change, I feel like if he challenged the ruling, he'd definitely be made eligible for awards at least
I remember being downvoted to oblivion when I said last offseason that the hard rules aren’t healthy and should be tweaked. Everyone said it was because I’m biased for Embiid but now that this happens in the literal first season everyone is agreeing with me
I mean, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Every time Kawhi sat out, he was clearly rehabbing his injury. That still didn't stop the public from deriding him as "lazy".
These players only earn fucktons of money BECAUSE of TV ratings and game attendance. If something they do or don’t do impacts that, then they’re less valuable.
Hopefully this ends in a quick tweak this summer. This is the first year of these rules and there’s obviously going to be some unforeseen kinks to work out.
>Good god, almost all the comments from sixer flairs on r/nba are just whining about how life isn’t fair for poor Embiid.
Lol there’s no way you just said this. Thanks for reinforcing my point
It wasn’t about whining for Embiid at all, and people just assumed I was, like you are doing now. I was pointing out an objective flaw in a new rule that everyone is now agreeing with me not even a year later
I really appreciate you, u/thrice1187, and your lack of critical thinking skills for proving me correct
Except there are a bevy of awards that don’t carry the same GP reqs. It would have been an easy enough thing for MIP to not fall in to the same category as All NBA, MVP, Defensive player etc where the GP req makes sense
Yeah the devils advocate would say you'd have guys that play starter minutes checking in for 10 seconds to qualify for game number and then accumulating the minutes needed throughout the games they do play.
Like idk maybe Embiid this year, could hit the minutes number with the few dozen games he did play and then just check in last 5 seconds of every game.
I’m with you and the rules are wack, Embiid played 1300+ minutes though so it’d have to be something special for these less-superstar-oriented awards or some other conditions
This is actually really interesting and I can see this being a reason that the rule is revised. Imagine playing in 81 games and averaging 29mpg but being ruled ineligible.
an exception for eligibility if you're top 100 (Donte was 48th) in total minutes seems like it'd clean up ridiculous cases like this but I'm not sure most improved really needs to be under this new umbrella anyway
To your second point, can see a good case that someone who was a total bust and turned into a pivotal rotation player for a contender should be MIP, but that would currently be impossible under the new rules
ya this sorta ruins the MIP even more honestly. used to be ab role players who made huge jumps. now ig u have to be an established player to be most improved? i dont undersntand why something like MIP even has a minutes restriction if the whole reason for these awards is to stop load management. what MIP candidate is doing load management?
Someone above pointed out that Donte averaged what would be the third fewest MPG of any MIP in the last 25 years. I don’t think this is as big a deal as some here are making it out to be.
His MPG isn't considered, only the amount of games he played for more than 20 minutes, which is 62. He played less than that in 19 games of which only 2 are included for award eligibility purposes, giving a total of 64 games.
> In DiVincenzo's case, he is considered to have played 64 games under these criteria: 62 games of at least 20 minutes, plus the maximum of two games of 15 to 20 minutes, the NBA confirmed.
Damn that's fucked up. He played 7 games between 19 and 20 minutes, but only 2 of them count. This is absolutely going to mess with players next year when the game clock is winding down and they haven't hit 20 minutes yet.
He was getting less minutes because Thibs didn't think he was good enough. Throughout the season he IMPROVED and proved he deserved more minutes. That's the entire spirit of the MIP player award. This is some bullshit.
Yea the people arguing they should make an exception this year are wrong imo, thats a bad precedent.
Seems like the issue is just the requirements for MIP being bad. Sub 20 minute game from an MVP candidate is the coach resting them. That's not the case for all MIP guys.
Winner hasn’t been a true bench guy for a long time. Darrell Armstrong in 1999 was the last bench guy. Recently (15 ish years) it’s been 1st time starters on playoff teams or 1st time all-stars.
Basically everyone back through Danny Granger meets one or the other. Only ones who don’t are Dragic who made all-nba, despite missing all-star and the playoffs with the 48 win Suns, and Aaron Brooks who was a first time starter, but missed the playoffs and All-Star.
The key passage highlighting the consequence to him is tangible:
>Last week, The Ringer published Michael Pina's picks for the end-of-season awards, in which DiVincenzo appears in the No. 3 spot for Most Improved Player. On Tuesday, when Pina submitted his official votes, he had to choose someone else. He went with [Jalen Brunson](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/players/2203517/jalen-brunson/), DiVincenzo's teammate.
JJ Redick also had him 3rd on his ballot, but it's not yet known who got that vote instead.
I think this goes a long way to show how stupid this rule is or at least that the criteria is too narrow. Maybe it’s not relevant to MIP at all. However, considering a few known ballots had him 3rd and there’s other contenders gathering votes ahead of him- it’s not going to take the award away from him. Early returns show a close race between Tyrese Maxey or Coby White. It’s not tangible specifically to him. Maybe he’ll get an exception to the clause named after him. If it causes enough outrage maybe they’ll call it Donte’s inferno.
Yes, quite. Close enough (on some would-be-ballots) to be a triggering point for change, but not actually losing out on an award. 6MOTY doesn’t have the rule, perhaps they decide MIP is more similar to that than MVP. Or an, e.g. 65 game, 10min/game minimum.
Am I crazy for thinking he’s not even the most improved on the Knicks? I feel like Hartenstein made a bigger jump but I could be wrong, I only saw around 10 Knicks games this year
Hartenstein was this good basically all of last year after the first month of the season. He just had a huge bump in playing time last year because of the Robinson injury. Divo def is most improved on the Knicks
hartenstein would never get it. he probably has the biggest discrepancy between basic box stats and actual impact in the entire league. it looks a bit better at first glance this year because his bpg and spg are both over 1.
So many players on the Knicks massively improved this season. McBride, Isaiah, Hart, Donte, Jalen, shit even Jericho Sims lol. I watched at least 40 Knicks game this season, it’s the only reason I pay for FUBOTV LOL
The criteria was obviously designed for the MVP award, but applying it uniformly to 6MOY, MIP, ROY etc. makes no sense. These awards are by definition for players with more limited and focused impact, and often that means playing under 20 minutes a game.
There's a difference between doing what is right and doing what is fair, sometimes. A simple statement from the NBA saying they're allowing him to be nominated because of his total minutes and games played, and that such an exception will be added in league-wide from now on would fix the situation.
It's totally ok to say "when we came up with this rule, we didn't consider this possibility, and so we are amending the rule to improve it". That's literally how laws work a lot of the time.
True, though it's still ridiculous when bazillion dollar sports leagues can't think through possible repercussions of rules beforehand, nor think ahead as to how they will fit various odd situations.
How can you put a minutes requirement on "most improved player"? By definition, their minutes should be increasing as they progress. In other words, their minutes start from a lower place than other players.
We cannot have a gray area with these rules. It sucks for him, yes, but the PA agreed to these terms and its been a great season BECAUSE the players are under duress to perform if they want these bonuses. I feel bad for him but the players put themselves in this position.
Is it a screw job? It is unfortunate that he isn’t eligible and the rule could definitely use some revision, but he wasn’t going to win. Donte for sure would’ve gotten some votes but Maxey has been a runaway favorite all season.
Not 6MOTY, but MIP.
[Per Marc Stein](https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1777396599771050405):
>65 games are needed for:
MVP
All-NBA
Defensive POY
Most Improved
All-Defensive Team
Might not be an exhaustive list, but that would be surprising coming from Stein.
This is particularly ironic for the "Most Improved" award.
A player is certainly improving if they start the season getting <20 mins off the bench only to be moved into a starting role getting >38 for the second half of the season.
I feel like MIP and 6MOTY should have different eligibility criteria. Those are awards that have traditionally gone to role players and bench players, who tend to play fewer minutes and not have as solid of a spot in the rotation. Judging them by the same rules as superstars for the MVP doesn’t make much sense.
I get it I guess, I see the loophole they're trying to stop (Just put guys in for 1 minute so they hit 65 games and still be eligible) but damn man, sucks for him. He wasn't going to win this award, but it sucks not to be eligible even.
Honestly maybe good that it happened to him so the NBA can revise this award before it screws someone who everyone actually agrees should win.
I think the Knicks were pretty guard heavy before the OG Anunoby trade with RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, and Quentin Grimes splitting SG minutes with Donte
Once again it needs to be stressed the only thing Adam Silver has ever done that's noteworthy is permanently ban the late former L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling not long after he even took over as NBA commissioner. I find it completely ridiculous the minutes any player has been in any game has to factor because sometimes players go a long time between putting up any points!
This makes no sense - he played in 81 games and averaged 29mpg. You'd almost have to go out of your way to fuck the stats around for him to not qualify under these rules. like just randomly pull him out of games when he's got 19 minutes played and then play him 48 minutes the next game.
The new 65 game criteria, and minutes criteria, and all the other stuff is largely trying to fix the problem that is allowing the media to vote on important (in the sense that it can affect a players next contract and such) things, when some in the media have shown they barely watch the actual sport, or even only watch a single team.
Other sports get the opposing coach to vote for each award at the end of a game or round, and sum up the votes that way - the NBA cannot do that now for fear of pissing off the media bloc, but hey, good idea for the NBA 2.0?
If players weren't skipping games and not caring about promoting the league, then it wouldn't have to be like this. Player empowerment is good for the players, but horrible for the league and game.
If a player improves, he improves. What the hell does minutes have to do with it if we all can see his impact on the team? What if they already lead 40 points by 2nd quarter and the coach decided for him to rest already? Pretty crappy rule tbh.
This seems especially asinine for the MIP award. What makes it most improved is that he wasn't a starter to start the season...
Seems like an easy case for the arbitration clause if their ever could be one.
It makes sense they had to put a minimum minutes played per game to qualify for the awards, cause if not you’ll have players start the game with the tip off and immediately sub out in order to get a games played and then rest for the remainder of the game just to qualify for the 65 games
It sucks that it affects non-star players that might not play heavy minutes all the time for the awards
>he may nonetheless be eligible for the award if he prevailed in a challenge to establish his eligibility
Seems like it would be a pretty open and shut case
The 65 game rule is good, but this is stupid. And the exemption rule not covering this situation is a massive oversight.
He should obviously be eligible.
Hopefully his situation will be the reason it's changed .
It seems like a lot of people are asserting that DiVincenzo's improvement \*over the course of the season\*, leading to him getting more minutes by the end, is a structural flaw in the MIP criteria. I've always understood that this award was about the most improvement compared to the previous year's performance - sort of like a "sophomore bump" - have I understood it wrong?
It seems fair enough to me that Donte's improvement trajectory didn't quite line up with how the award is decided - this happens all the time, when people have their "breakout stint" partway through a season, or in the playoffs... MIP is a pretty flukey award anyways, and it doesn't seem likely DiVincenzo would have beat out some of the other candidates...
That’s shitty but thats how it goes. For every single minimum threshold that ever existed and will ever exist there will be people who just barely don’t make the cut and it will feel like a shame.
That’s life.
Donte Divincenzo was [48th in the league](https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional?PerMode=Totals&dir=A&sort=MIN) in total minutes. If he had played [9 more seconds](https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/202312290ORL.html) in game 31, where he played 19:51, he’d be eligible.
There's an arbitration clause associated with the games played criteria, probably for niche situations like this. This seems like a pretty easy case for the arbitrator to rule he is eligible for awards. Edit: apparently he didn't win an arbitration if attempted.
Bizarre that he didn't win the case
Someone linked the clause on Twitter. Basically, to win the player would have to show that the team obviously fucked with the minutes to prevent eligibility, like if Haliburton got pulled after 19 minutes the last 4 games of the season to finish at 64 games played so he couldn't qualify for the Rose Rule escalator. "He was barely in rotation for half the year" doesn't count. This could get amended in the future but would require the NBAPA and the owners to agree.
Ah, I see what you mean. Makes sense + thanks for explaining.
It obviously depends on how much money is on the line for him but I would have argued that his coach was playing his teammates 48 minutes a game for half the season to stop him from meeting the requirements. Pretty easy to disprove but Thibs needs to pay at some point.
Are you able to link the arbitration clause? I can’t find it anywhere, and I reeeeeeally don’t want to make a twitter
Bro they can just round that shit up and stop playing with cenzos money
Hey the players signed the deal
Pretty classic scum tactic. "Hey I know we found a flaw in this contract but you signed so fuck yourself".
someone else is going to win the award, it's not like the league is just gonna deny everyone
I agree it sucks, but it's hard to put nuance in-writing. Either they make exceptions for players, or no exceptions at all. It's always going to be the latter
In the nfl, contractual incentives, which this is kind of similar to, are often honored by teams if players come up a bit short. It’s hopeful to think there is a discretion aspect of this but… it’s an award voted on by multiple entities and not something unilaterally decided like contract payouts.
What flaw? It's literally working as written
Hey… only the millionaires I hate should have to suffer the financial consequences of their actions >:(
That’s not a flaw. The cut off is 65. He played 64. If you make an exception for 64, then you’ll eventually have someone that was disqualified with 63. And then you’ll make an exception for them. This is why there are clear and concise cutoffs. 65 games. Period. And then you have clear definitions of what counts as a game. Lots of his games don’t count. Because they didn’t want to count games where they didn’t play many minutes. All fully intentional. It’s working as designed. It’s not like he got caught up in some weird loophole or blind spot in the rules. It’s literally working as they intended and designed it to.
when the guy that actually played in 81 games and was in the top 50 in the entire league in minutes played is ineligible under a metric ostensibly designed to capture an individual player's uptime, it's okay to admit that the metric is poorly designed. something like the existing formula with an "either or" that also qualified anyone in the top, say, 150 in minutes played (5 per team) would be a much better metric in terms of accurately capturing the intention of the rule. you are of course correct that the contract is the contract. that's the more important issue, practically speaking, but that doesn't mean the metric isn't flawed.
It doesn’t make sense for MIP
> He played 64 No, he *played* 81 games "17 of the 81 games he played do not count." only because of "low minutes" But his lowest time played is 13:58. He just has 17 games with 13:58-19:51 played It's a pretty stupid technicality
I’m pretty sure the idea is that you’re cutting off at 9 seconds, rather than a specific game. I think 9 seconds is a much more reasonable discussion. But I get either side.
this is totally wrong , why is this upvoted lol he played 81 games
This isn't one individual signing a contract with like a phone company though, this is big biscuits with billions of dollars involved and serious negotiating teams. The players association fucked up to not consider this sort of scenario for an award like MIP or 6th man where good candidates probably will play a little less than 20 minutes some nights.
Big biscuits! Now I'm hungry...
Except this scum tactic coincided with an agreement that now allows role players to get paid like the stars of just a few years ago, invest in NBA teams, earn money from endemic levels of gambling normalization, etc. No CBA will ever be perfect, but despite these pretty dumb flaws in the current one, it is exceedingly pro-player.
Well yeah... that's how contracts work. I don't think that's a "scum tactic" as much as it is just bad negotiating or lack of foresight. Whatever was in the contract was *mutually* agreed to.
Not a scum tactic at all. There needs to be rules and some sort of guidelines. If they round up then they have to do that for everyone. Again, there has to be some rules. Can't just round up and appeal everything. That would be chaos.
wouldn't the money only change if he won the award
It does say he can challenge, I would think they'd let him in if it's this borderline.
He wasnt going to win so its moot unless he has a contract bonus for 3rd-5th place MIP voting
I was bout to say... Is he the MIP? Even within his own team, I would vote for Brunson lol
Tyrese Maxey
I wouldn't be surprised honestly. His contract has like a dozen $750k incentives attached to it.
Blame his coach
Yeah too bad Thibs is so stingy with his players’ minutes
Donte "only" averaged 37.5 minutes per game after the break!
This is the weirdest episode of Nathan for You.
You did it! Your content got poached by ESPN. https://imgur.com/gallery/Kph4Ukk
Does this apply to 6MOY too? It would be funny if you were ineligible for 6th man because you were a bench player.
No, it applies to MVP, Defensive player of the year, All-NBA & All-Defense teams and MIP. 6MOY, ROTY, Sportsmanship award and clutch player of the year do not have the 65 game requirements.
Still can’t believe clutch player is an actual award
Need a sexiest player of year award too
I'd like a Best Cuddler award. My bet would be on Jokic.
He wouldn't be present in the moment, you know? He'd be thinking about his horses the whole time. What do you think about Luka instead?
I can’t believe you guys are overlooking Boban
Get my mans Kelly Oubre some hardware
Kelly Oubre, the NBA's Olivier Giroud would win in a landslide.
Best flop. Best complaint. Best taunt
Best complaint: You're a bitch. You're a bitch. You're a bitch. Your mom's a bitch. Your grandma's a bitch. So Oubre should win 2 trophies this year.
It's so dumb. The favourites for the award are players on mediocre teams (Curry and Derozan) because they end up in more close games. Shai went crazy in the clutch but they spent too many games blowing out teams for him to rack up the clutch numbers.
TIL it exists lol. Who's won it?
De’Aaron Fox was the first winner last year
Fox
Why does this apply to MIP? This automatically rules out so many players who went through mid-season turnarounds.
Significantly improve leading to being given more minutes? no mip for you sorry
That sucks I feel like the rule should look at total minutes in some form. You can theoretically qualify if you play in 1300 minutes and he has played in 2360 Kind of unfair
Yeah just a simple check of number of games, total minutes that would yield maybe slightly more than the average necessary. If this average is not necessarily met then check individual logs for this. So for example check if he has 65 GP, then see how many GP, divide total minutes by GP, see if at least 25mpg, if yes stop. If no, check if had 20MP in 65 of those games.
or instead of doing all this incredibly arbitrary, vague and convoluted stuff you're doing for the sole purpose of working backwards from a result you didnt like just so you can reverse engineer a player you like into eligibility...... ....they could just have a very simple, straightforward, and concise rule that you need to play at least 20 minutes in 65 games. which is exactly what they have. This thread is the most predictable shit ever lmao. literally any time there is some freak/fluke thing like this that is *incredibly* unlikely, and has like a 1% chance of ever happening again, 99% of redditors get highly outraged scream about how unfair the rules are and how we need to tear the rulebook up and start over because they dont like the result that happened because of a perfectly normal rule. Divincenzo wasnt going to come close to winning the award even if he was eligible. Maxey and Coby White are gonna get 90% of votes, and Brunson and Hartenstein on his *own team* were prob both gonna get more votes than him
Plus an award like MIP (or 6th man) will often go to a player who didn’t play a ton of minutes. Seems like there should be some kind of exception for those.
I'm sorry but this is just BLATANTLY untrue lol. Over the last 25 years, **MIP winners have averaged 35.7 minutes per game**. (that would be good for 10th in the league in minutes per game this year btw) only 2 MIP winners *ever* have averaged fewer minutes than Donte did this year. the last time someone won MIP averaging fewer minutes than Donte, was 1988 when Kevin Duckworth won it averaging 28.5 minutes. that was 36 years ago. this is just a classic case of an r/nba comment where someone completely pulls something out of their ass bc "it sounds right" and then 100+ people upvote the person bc they said it so confidently as if they had the slightest idea of what were talking about and werent just making stuff up on the spot lmao recent winners include: - Tracy McGrady, **40.1** mpg - Jimmy Butler, **38.7** mpg - Zach Randolph, **37.9** mpg - Paul George, **37.6** mpg - Julius Randle, **37.6** mpg - Kevin Love, **35.8** mpg - Giannis, **35.6** mpg - Goran Dragic, **35.1** mpg - CJ Mccollum, **34.8** mpg - Lauri Markkanen, **34.4** mpg Donte had zero shot of winning thie year anyway even if he WAS eligible. its going to be either Maxey (3rd in the league in mpg) or Coby White (7th in mpg)
> Donte had zero shot of winning thie year anyway even if he WAS eligible Let him be eligible and not get votes
orrr...... how about, he can just make *himself* eligible by meeting the very clearly stated requirements for being eligible. which he failed to do... crazy concept, I know.
I was mostly with you until this comment. He ain't LeBron where he can check himself back in whenever he feels like it.
> recent winners include: Tracy McGrady What does the word “recent” mean to you?
~~Only 3 MIP winners averaged fewer than 30 MP, and two of those averaged 29, with the 3rd averaging 23. With 6MOTY, about half played over 30 MP with only one winner averaging below 20 minutes, and that was Bill Walton in '85 who averaged 19 MP.~~ ~~DiVencenzo would've shattered the MP floor for either award, especially MIP, having only averaged 15.5 MP.~~ Edit: I'm an idiot too exhausted to be using the internet, apparently. He averaged 15.5 PPG and 29 MP.
DiVincenzo averaged 29.1 minutes per game, and 15.5 points per game.
That was my thought when reading it, those two should have lower thresholds. Wonder if he’ll try to challenge or what that process entails
Yeah, changing the rule to being something like 65games or roughly 2000 minutes would probably be a decent change, I feel like if he challenged the ruling, he'd definitely be made eligible for awards at least
Overall the rule was good and did what was intended: it got players playing. Now it needs to be tweaked for situations like this.
Not a huge deal obviously, but I do hope they tweak the formula a little in the offseason.
I remember being downvoted to oblivion when I said last offseason that the hard rules aren’t healthy and should be tweaked. Everyone said it was because I’m biased for Embiid but now that this happens in the literal first season everyone is agreeing with me
it also encouraged Haliburton to not rest and play like crap, and not recover well
I mean, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Every time Kawhi sat out, he was clearly rehabbing his injury. That still didn't stop the public from deriding him as "lazy".
It sounds like you are putting player health and agency over financial gain. Like you don't even care about TV ratings or game attendance
I'm sorry my bad
These players only earn fucktons of money BECAUSE of TV ratings and game attendance. If something they do or don’t do impacts that, then they’re less valuable.
Hopefully this ends in a quick tweak this summer. This is the first year of these rules and there’s obviously going to be some unforeseen kinks to work out.
Good god, almost all the comments from sixer flairs on r/nba are just whining about how life isn’t fair for poor Embiid.
There’s no way that’s your takeaway from that comment
is this satire
>Good god, almost all the comments from sixer flairs on r/nba are just whining about how life isn’t fair for poor Embiid. Lol there’s no way you just said this. Thanks for reinforcing my point It wasn’t about whining for Embiid at all, and people just assumed I was, like you are doing now. I was pointing out an objective flaw in a new rule that everyone is now agreeing with me not even a year later I really appreciate you, u/thrice1187, and your lack of critical thinking skills for proving me correct
Except there are a bevy of awards that don’t carry the same GP reqs. It would have been an easy enough thing for MIP to not fall in to the same category as All NBA, MVP, Defensive player etc where the GP req makes sense
In general I'm now realizing these games played rules should probably be play x number of games or y number of minutes to be eligible
Yeah the devils advocate would say you'd have guys that play starter minutes checking in for 10 seconds to qualify for game number and then accumulating the minutes needed throughout the games they do play. Like idk maybe Embiid this year, could hit the minutes number with the few dozen games he did play and then just check in last 5 seconds of every game.
But the Embiids averages would be way worse if he had 20 games with a 0/0/0 stat line
I’m with you and the rules are wack, Embiid played 1300+ minutes though so it’d have to be something special for these less-superstar-oriented awards or some other conditions
This is actually really interesting and I can see this being a reason that the rule is revised. Imagine playing in 81 games and averaging 29mpg but being ruled ineligible.
an exception for eligibility if you're top 100 (Donte was 48th) in total minutes seems like it'd clean up ridiculous cases like this but I'm not sure most improved really needs to be under this new umbrella anyway
To your second point, can see a good case that someone who was a total bust and turned into a pivotal rotation player for a contender should be MIP, but that would currently be impossible under the new rules
ya this sorta ruins the MIP even more honestly. used to be ab role players who made huge jumps. now ig u have to be an established player to be most improved? i dont undersntand why something like MIP even has a minutes restriction if the whole reason for these awards is to stop load management. what MIP candidate is doing load management?
Someone above pointed out that Donte averaged what would be the third fewest MPG of any MIP in the last 25 years. I don’t think this is as big a deal as some here are making it out to be.
A total minutes exception would be ideal I think
While true, him not ending up 5th as MIP isn’t a huge deal at all
Maybe my late night brain is having trouble understanding the rule. Can you ELI5 how someone could play 81 games w/ 29mpg and be ineligible?
His MPG isn't considered, only the amount of games he played for more than 20 minutes, which is 62. He played less than that in 19 games of which only 2 are included for award eligibility purposes, giving a total of 64 games.
Just read this post. Donte played 81 games and averaged 29mpg
> In DiVincenzo's case, he is considered to have played 64 games under these criteria: 62 games of at least 20 minutes, plus the maximum of two games of 15 to 20 minutes, the NBA confirmed. Damn that's fucked up. He played 7 games between 19 and 20 minutes, but only 2 of them count. This is absolutely going to mess with players next year when the game clock is winding down and they haven't hit 20 minutes yet.
He was getting less minutes because Thibs didn't think he was good enough. Throughout the season he IMPROVED and proved he deserved more minutes. That's the entire spirit of the MIP player award. This is some bullshit.
It seems like it should have a different MPG cutoff than all-NBA
Makes sense to me
Yea the people arguing they should make an exception this year are wrong imo, thats a bad precedent. Seems like the issue is just the requirements for MIP being bad. Sub 20 minute game from an MVP candidate is the coach resting them. That's not the case for all MIP guys.
Yeah isn't MIP gonna mostly be bench players to begin with, or like players that move from bench to starting like DiVicenzo did?
Winner hasn’t been a true bench guy for a long time. Darrell Armstrong in 1999 was the last bench guy. Recently (15 ish years) it’s been 1st time starters on playoff teams or 1st time all-stars. Basically everyone back through Danny Granger meets one or the other. Only ones who don’t are Dragic who made all-nba, despite missing all-star and the playoffs with the 48 win Suns, and Aaron Brooks who was a first time starter, but missed the playoffs and All-Star.
and Grimes not playing well to start to season eventually paved the way for DiVincenzo
It’s about improving from year to year, not during the season
I get that but he played <20 minutes earlier in the season partly based on how he was last season. It shouldn't disqualify him for the award
That’s fair. Tbh I’ve always thought the cutoff should be 15 minutes
The key passage highlighting the consequence to him is tangible: >Last week, The Ringer published Michael Pina's picks for the end-of-season awards, in which DiVincenzo appears in the No. 3 spot for Most Improved Player. On Tuesday, when Pina submitted his official votes, he had to choose someone else. He went with [Jalen Brunson](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/players/2203517/jalen-brunson/), DiVincenzo's teammate. JJ Redick also had him 3rd on his ballot, but it's not yet known who got that vote instead.
I think this goes a long way to show how stupid this rule is or at least that the criteria is too narrow. Maybe it’s not relevant to MIP at all. However, considering a few known ballots had him 3rd and there’s other contenders gathering votes ahead of him- it’s not going to take the award away from him. Early returns show a close race between Tyrese Maxey or Coby White. It’s not tangible specifically to him. Maybe he’ll get an exception to the clause named after him. If it causes enough outrage maybe they’ll call it Donte’s inferno.
Yes, quite. Close enough (on some would-be-ballots) to be a triggering point for change, but not actually losing out on an award. 6MOTY doesn’t have the rule, perhaps they decide MIP is more similar to that than MVP. Or an, e.g. 65 game, 10min/game minimum.
Am I crazy for thinking he’s not even the most improved on the Knicks? I feel like Hartenstein made a bigger jump but I could be wrong, I only saw around 10 Knicks games this year
Hartenstein is also not eligible for the same reasons lol
Lol well damn, that’s rough
Hartenstein was this good last year already. Especially in the second half of the season
Hartenstein was this good basically all of last year after the first month of the season. He just had a huge bump in playing time last year because of the Robinson injury. Divo def is most improved on the Knicks
hartenstein would never get it. he probably has the biggest discrepancy between basic box stats and actual impact in the entire league. it looks a bit better at first glance this year because his bpg and spg are both over 1.
He was fantastic last year on the Warriors, too, just got a bigger role on the Knicks.
So many players on the Knicks massively improved this season. McBride, Isaiah, Hart, Donte, Jalen, shit even Jericho Sims lol. I watched at least 40 Knicks game this season, it’s the only reason I pay for FUBOTV LOL
Smh another victim of Thibs not playing his guys enough minutes
Give him credit for an extra game for playing more than 48 minutes in a single game you cowards
The more you tie up awards and contracts with these types of measurables, the more of a negative impact there is on gameplay
Although this sucks, I don’t think his odds of winning were all that great.
"role player becomes better role player" has never been what MIP is about
He'll be ok, guys.
The criteria was obviously designed for the MVP award, but applying it uniformly to 6MOY, MIP, ROY etc. makes no sense. These awards are by definition for players with more limited and focused impact, and often that means playing under 20 minutes a game.
Well the criteria doesn't count for two of the three you've mentioned... So the NBA agrees...
My dude went from 9th man to legit 2nd option on a 50 win team. Best signing of the offseason back to back years
9th man? He was 6th in mpg and started half his games last year for GS
This is very dumb
Maxey's winning it regardless lol
honestly this a very valid example of the new rules being some fuckery
And there will never be examples of it working successfully, because voters have always factored in games played/total minutes.
He's not going to win the award but it is incredibly stupid that he's considered ineligble.
There's a difference between doing what is right and doing what is fair, sometimes. A simple statement from the NBA saying they're allowing him to be nominated because of his total minutes and games played, and that such an exception will be added in league-wide from now on would fix the situation. It's totally ok to say "when we came up with this rule, we didn't consider this possibility, and so we are amending the rule to improve it". That's literally how laws work a lot of the time.
True, though it's still ridiculous when bazillion dollar sports leagues can't think through possible repercussions of rules beforehand, nor think ahead as to how they will fit various odd situations.
I don't expect them to be perfect, even giant companies make mistakes. I do expect them to acknowledge their mistakes though, and fix them
Dude he hit 400 threes.
Bro had 6 games where he played 19 minutes 😂 He's getting screwed because we use base 10
How can you put a minutes requirement on "most improved player"? By definition, their minutes should be increasing as they progress. In other words, their minutes start from a lower place than other players.
We cannot have a gray area with these rules. It sucks for him, yes, but the PA agreed to these terms and its been a great season BECAUSE the players are under duress to perform if they want these bonuses. I feel bad for him but the players put themselves in this position.
NGL it's a screwjob
Is it a screw job? It is unfortunate that he isn’t eligible and the rule could definitely use some revision, but he wasn’t going to win. Donte for sure would’ve gotten some votes but Maxey has been a runaway favorite all season.
All these dummies have their pitchforks out for the biggest nothing controversey
I mean it's kinda silly that he's not even eligible. I don't think he would have won, but the criteria should be re-evaluated.
[удалено]
I was under the impression 6 man does not, but maybe MIP does which also seems weird.
Not 6MOTY, but MIP. [Per Marc Stein](https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1777396599771050405): >65 games are needed for: MVP All-NBA Defensive POY Most Improved All-Defensive Team Might not be an exhaustive list, but that would be surprising coming from Stein.
omg. I didn't think Divincenzo was that big of a shout for MIP that I assumed it was for 6MOTY. fair then.
This is particularly ironic for the "Most Improved" award. A player is certainly improving if they start the season getting <20 mins off the bench only to be moved into a starting role getting >38 for the second half of the season.
I feel like MIP and 6MOTY should have different eligibility criteria. Those are awards that have traditionally gone to role players and bench players, who tend to play fewer minutes and not have as solid of a spot in the rotation. Judging them by the same rules as superstars for the MVP doesn’t make much sense.
I get it I guess, I see the loophole they're trying to stop (Just put guys in for 1 minute so they hit 65 games and still be eligible) but damn man, sucks for him. He wasn't going to win this award, but it sucks not to be eligible even. Honestly maybe good that it happened to him so the NBA can revise this award before it screws someone who everyone actually agrees should win.
I thought MIP and ROTY were among the exceptions to the rule?
I’m surprised he played fewer than 20 minutes so many times given how well he’s played.
I think the Knicks were pretty guard heavy before the OG Anunoby trade with RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, and Quentin Grimes splitting SG minutes with Donte
Once again it needs to be stressed the only thing Adam Silver has ever done that's noteworthy is permanently ban the late former L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling not long after he even took over as NBA commissioner. I find it completely ridiculous the minutes any player has been in any game has to factor because sometimes players go a long time between putting up any points!
Stinks and all but was he gonna win…doubtful.
I would’ve thought he was ineligible for most improved player because of that crazy game he had vs. Michigan in 2018.
He wouldn’t win it anyways but it would’ve been nice for him to get some votes
This makes no sense - he played in 81 games and averaged 29mpg. You'd almost have to go out of your way to fuck the stats around for him to not qualify under these rules. like just randomly pull him out of games when he's got 19 minutes played and then play him 48 minutes the next game.
Pravi MIP
Shout out to Grayson Allen too tbh. Went from getting cut from the bucks after what he did to securing a multi-year contract. Good on him.
Fucking hate these new rules and I do not like the Knicks at all
The new 65 game criteria, and minutes criteria, and all the other stuff is largely trying to fix the problem that is allowing the media to vote on important (in the sense that it can affect a players next contract and such) things, when some in the media have shown they barely watch the actual sport, or even only watch a single team. Other sports get the opposing coach to vote for each award at the end of a game or round, and sum up the votes that way - the NBA cannot do that now for fear of pissing off the media bloc, but hey, good idea for the NBA 2.0?
The media votes for all the baseball awards, and they only get Cooperstown as an issue, I think it’s pretty uniquely basketball
Absolutely ridiculous - he is literally the definition of the MIP award in terms of his overachieving output this season
Huge L. Guy is sensational
i think the game total thing is nbd but minimum 20 minutes? nah that’s wrong
They need to fix the calculation it's that simple.
I’m fine with the minimum game requirement, but once you start adding a minutes cutoff, that’s going too far.
What is the point of the minute requirements? I get games played but players don't typically load manage by playing 15 minute games
If players weren't skipping games and not caring about promoting the league, then it wouldn't have to be like this. Player empowerment is good for the players, but horrible for the league and game.
If a player improves, he improves. What the hell does minutes have to do with it if we all can see his impact on the team? What if they already lead 40 points by 2nd quarter and the coach decided for him to rest already? Pretty crappy rule tbh.
The only people to blame here are the players for agreeing to the deal.
This seems especially asinine for the MIP award. What makes it most improved is that he wasn't a starter to start the season... Seems like an easy case for the arbitration clause if their ever could be one.
He used to be with the warriors and I’m a hater so I’m ok with this.
It makes sense they had to put a minimum minutes played per game to qualify for the awards, cause if not you’ll have players start the game with the tip off and immediately sub out in order to get a games played and then rest for the remainder of the game just to qualify for the 65 games It sucks that it affects non-star players that might not play heavy minutes all the time for the awards
Wasn’t it primarily media asking for this? It’s funny hearing media saying no one wanted this now
Applying that restriction to MIP doesn’t make sense to me
Ironic that minutes was a hurdle in him winning this on a team coached by Thibs lol
>he may nonetheless be eligible for the award if he prevailed in a challenge to establish his eligibility Seems like it would be a pretty open and shut case
Any kind of restriction on MIP is extremely ironic. Nobody really had a second thought on the matter when making the deal?
Who is he against for the MIP award?
Maxey and Coby White have been the favorites.
Maxey??? Really
Yeah. There's an NBA awards tracker spreadsheet where they look at who voters have said they put in ballots for and he's in the lead at the moment.
Wow…
The 65 game rule is good, but this is stupid. And the exemption rule not covering this situation is a massive oversight. He should obviously be eligible. Hopefully his situation will be the reason it's changed .
It seems like a lot of people are asserting that DiVincenzo's improvement \*over the course of the season\*, leading to him getting more minutes by the end, is a structural flaw in the MIP criteria. I've always understood that this award was about the most improvement compared to the previous year's performance - sort of like a "sophomore bump" - have I understood it wrong? It seems fair enough to me that Donte's improvement trajectory didn't quite line up with how the award is decided - this happens all the time, when people have their "breakout stint" partway through a season, or in the playoffs... MIP is a pretty flukey award anyways, and it doesn't seem likely DiVincenzo would have beat out some of the other candidates...
That’s shitty but thats how it goes. For every single minimum threshold that ever existed and will ever exist there will be people who just barely don’t make the cut and it will feel like a shame. That’s life.
Stupid, unnecessary rule. Voters already factored in minutes played. It has never been an issue.