Anthony Edwards has spent the 2025-26 season doing everything you would want a franchise player to do. He is scoring at the highest rate of his career. He is shooting better from the field and from three than he ever has. He won the All-Star MVP. He dropped a career-high 55 points on Victor Wembanyama’s San Antonio Spurs in January. And when the NBA announces its end-of-season awards, his name will not appear on any ballot.
The reason is arithmetic. The league’s 65-game threshold, introduced in 2023-24, requires players to appear in at least 65 games to qualify for individual postseason honors. Edwards, through a combination of a hamstring issue, knee inflammation, and an illness, will finish the regular season at no more than 64 qualifying games, according to Fadeaway World and Yahoo Sports. He is one game short. The best season of his career, in the eyes of the league’s awards apparatus, does not exist.
Through 59 games, Edwards is averaging 29.3 points per game, per Heavy Sports and Hoops Rumors, third in the NBA behind Luka Doncic at 33.5 and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at 31.8. He is shooting 49.3 percent from the field and 40.4 percent from three, both career highs, according to National Today. His 62.1 percent true shooting percentage, per CraftedNBA, and top-15 rankings in PER, Box Plus/Minus, and VORP, per CBS Sports, mark him as one of the most impactful players in the league. On February 15, he scored 32 points in 26 minutes to win the Kobe Bryant All-Star MVP Award, collecting 10 of 14 votes, according to Newsweek and Yahoo Sports.
How three minutes and a stomach bug sealed it
The path to ineligibility is almost absurd. In the third game of the season against Indiana, Edwards played just three minutes before leaving with hamstring tightness, per Yardbarker. Under the rule, players must log at least 15 minutes in all 65 qualifying games. That three-minute appearance does not count, according to Front Office Sports. Then on March 17, an MRI revealed right knee inflammation, sidelining him for six straight games, per the Star Tribune. He returned March 30 against Dallas, scoring 17 points in a blowout. He came off the bench because, as he candidly told reporters, “I was taking a sh*t” at tipoff, according to CBS News. Coach Chris Finch: “Nature calls.”
But when Edwards was ruled out again April 2 against Detroit, primarily due to illness, according to ESPN, the math became terminal. Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic confirmed it: Edwards can no longer qualify for postseason awards, per Heavy Sports. The Star Tribune’s Chris Hine noted Edwards has never been a load-management player, making the penalty feel especially arbitrary.
A league-wide problem with real money attached
Edwards is not alone. Doncic, the league’s leading scorer, will also finish at 64 games after a hamstring injury on April 2, per ClutchPoints. Cade Cunningham missed time with a collapsed lung. LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Stephen Curry are all ineligible, according to Fadeaway World. The NBPA called the rule “an arbitrary and overly rigid quota” that “must be abolished or reformed,” per Front Office Sports.
The financial stakes are concrete. Edwards was All-NBA Second Team in both 2023-24 and 2024-25, per Hoops Rumors. A third selection would have locked in supermax eligibility for the contract extension he can sign in 2027, according to CBS Sports. He already holds a five-year, $244.6 million extension signed in July 2023, per Yardbarker, but the supermax tier, worth tens of millions more, now requires him to earn the honor again next season.
Finch proposed a middle ground: “If you’re worthy of the award and you haven’t played 65 games, you should still get the award, but maybe you don’t get the trigger to the money that goes with the award,” per ClutchPoints. Commissioner Adam Silver was unmoved: “I’m not ready to say it’s not working. It is working,” he said, according to the Star Tribune.
Minnesota sits at 46-31 and holds the sixth seed in the West, per ClutchPoints and StatMuse. The team went 4-1 during Edwards’ absence, including a road win at Boston, their first there in 21 years. Jaden McDaniels is week-to-week with a knee injury, per Pro Football Network. Julius Randle has been the durable second option at 21.1 points across 77 games, per Basketball-Reference.com, though his defensive effort has drawn public criticism from Finch. If Edwards and McDaniels are healthy for the playoffs, the Wolves have the talent to make noise. But Edwards will enter the postseason without any individual recognition for what he did to get there.
The 65-game rule was designed to reward availability. Instead, in a season ravaged by injuries, it is erasing excellence. Edwards is 24. He just had the best year of his career in a Timberwolves uniform. The league’s rulebook says none of it happened.
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