Donte DiVincenzo was among the protagonists of the great season of the New York Knicks, capable of winning 50 games and finishing in second place in the Eastern Conference. The player, who in recent months has also been approached by the Italian national team as a possible naturalized player, scored 15.5 points on average: 6.1 more than last season at the Golden State Warriors.
For this reason, DiVincenzo would have been a perfect candidate for the award of Most Improved Player. It would have been, because the reality the Knicks guard will not be able to be voted for not meeting the criteria decided last year by the NBA.
To disincentivize the load management, the League has indeed decided that in order to be nominated for one of the individual awards, you have to play a minimum of 65 games, but a game only counts if you stay on the field 20′. DiVincenzo played as many as 81 games, but only in 62 of them did he reach 20′. From October to January, in fact, Donte had a less crucial role on Tom Thibodeau’s roster: only from January onward, also “thanks” to some injuries of teammates, DiVincenzo started playing more, up to the 39.9 minutes average in April and the 53′ played in the last game of the season vs. Chicago.
The hoax is even greater because the NBA decided to include even a small margin: games of at least 20′ must be 62, but two “bonus” games are allowed to be counted as long as the player was on the court between 15 and 20 minutes. This detail adds 2 more games to DiVincenzo’s total, which thus comes to 64. The decisive 65th game that could have counted was on December 29: a game against Orlando in which the Knicks player remained on the court… 19 minutes 51 seconds. In short, if Thibodeau had fielded him for 9 seconds longer that day, perhaps DiVincenzo would have won the MIP.
Milan, Italy. A graduate in Labor Management and Communication for Organizations from Catholic University, I founded BasketUniverso in 2011. Yes, I root for Orlando Magic and do my best not to hide it.
