NBA MVP Race: Mavericks’ Luka Doncic is now ineligible for regular season awards

Despite having a strong start of the 2024-25 campaign, Luka Doncic is no longer available to conquer the MVP title or any other regular-season awards this year. After the Slovenian star missed Sunday’s match against the Nuggets, which meant his 17th absence so far, he won’t be able to complete the amount of matches needed to be eligible.

The Mavericks star has been sidelined for two weeks with a left calf strain, and is expected to be out for at least two more until he finally recovers from this injury. Unfortunately for him, this means his streak of five-straight All-NBA first-team selections will finally come to an end this season.

Doncic now joins an ever-growing list of superstars who won’t be able to meet this year’s 65-game requirement to compete for the end-of-campaign accolades, along with Joel Embiid, Zion Williamson, Kawhi Leonard and even youngsters like Chet Holmgren and Paolo Banchero.

Luka Doncic is officially ineligible for this season’s MVP.

This is the fifth time in his career he’s been favorite to win MVP to start the season and hasn’t won 😬 pic.twitter.com/h8ZEPmbBZX

— piwi247 (@piwi247official) January 13, 2025

His coach Jason Kidd was quick to react to this disappointing reality, but believes these rules were imposed for a reason. “Unfortunately, that’s the norm right now with the way the rules are set up,” said the Dallas tactician on Sunday.

The Hall of Famer knows that Luka will continue to be considered one of the best in the league. “When you have a major injury, it can knock you out, but we know he’s one of the best players. He’s always mentioned as an MVP candidate,” he assured.

One of his ex-teammates, who is now a star in New York, gave his take on the media’s constant comparison between Nikola Jokic’s case for MVP this year with the Slovenian. According to Jalen Brunson, Doncic’s stats last season were deserving of the award.

“[The Nuggets are] not seeded where they were last year, and people are still talking about him like being MVP,” he said about the Serbian center. “Individually, he deserves it. But when Luka [Doncic] was averaging damn near triple-double, but [the Mavs] seed wasn’t where people wanted it to be, they were like, ‘Oh, he shouldn’t get MVP because of seeding.'”

Despite only playing in 22 contests so far this campaign, the Mavericks point guard has been averaging 28.1 points on 46.4% shooting, 8.3 rebounds, 7.3 assists and 2.0 steals per game.