Want to get more Covers content? Add us as a preferred source on your Google account here.
Luka Doncic and Cade Cunningham—two candidates who each missed out on making the top three in voting for MVP—may have lost the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award for Kon Knueppel even after votes were due.
How is that timeline possible, and why did two non-rookies play such a pivotal role in this year’s awards race? Let’s review the timeline…
Former Duke teammates Kon Knueppel and Cooper Flagg were engaged in a back-and-forth battle for the award nearly all season.
The NBA extended its voting deadline due to “extraordinary circumstances”.
Knueppel had a strong early lead in first-place votes and still leads in overall points.
Nearly two-thirds of first-place ROTY votes cast after the Play-In were for Flagg.
NBA award voters are required to submit their ballots for MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, and all other categories, including Rookie of the Year, immediately after the final game of the regular season and before the Play-In Tournament.
This year’s timeline was altered by Doncic and Cunningham both submitting Extraordinary Circumstances Challenges after they were initially ruled ineligible for regular-season awards. Both players suited up for 64 games, one shy of the mandatory minimum for awards candidates included in the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, taking them out of awards races despite them playing at an all-league level.
Doncic’s challenge case centered on him missing two games for the birth of his child in his native Slovenia. Cunningham did not play from March 17 until April 8 after he suffered a collapsed lung while diving for a loose ball against the Washington Wizards.
The league ruled in favor of both players, extending the voting deadline from midnight on April 12 to 3:00 p.m. on Friday, April 17.
In doing so, they may have given Knueppel just enough time to play himself out of the Rookie of the Year conversation.
BetMGM closed the regular season with Flagg as a -175 favorite in Rookie of the Year odds. He and his former college roommate had flip-flopped atop the odds board for months prior amid historic seasons, with Knueppel leading the entire league in made threes and Flagg becoming the youngest player to score 50 points in an NBA game.
Knueppel was back on the court in the Play-In Tournament on Tuesday, April 14, two days after the conclusion of the regular season and when votes were supposed to be submitted. He ended up playing one of the worst games of his short-lived professional career, totaling six points, five rebounds, and four fouls on 16.7% shooting, and was benched down the stretch for backup guard Coby White.
Television cameras aired several standalone shots of Knueppel standing in dismay as he was held out of playing late in the fourth quarter and in overtime of a battle that the Hornets eventually won by one point.
That was the last image that awards voters saw of the young rookie before they were required to submit their ballots less than three days later.
According to an awards voting tracker, Knueppel had a 6-2 lead in first-place votes for Rookie of the Year before the end of Tuesday, the day of the Play-In disaster. Flagg now holds a 13-12 lead in first-place votes, meaning that he claimed 11 of 17 (64.7%) possible votes after the Play-In concluded.
Voters were not supposed to factor the Play-In into their thinking when they made their ballots. However, Fox Sports 1 analyst and voter Rachel Nichols admitted that the Play-In “totally” influenced her thinking in a “first-time-in history” situation.
The ballot for NBA Awards voting has popped into my email, now that the "extraordinary circumstances" decisions have been made. Quick turnaround - we have to turn them in by 3p ET tomorrow, which means before tomorrow's games. (No, play in games aren't supposed to influence votes…
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) April 16, 2026