The honesty towards the end, lol

Stop tying contracts to media-voted awards

The full quote

“I’ll be honest with you. Through 13 years of being in the league I think I’ve played 65 games every year. I’m still going to try. I think I’m still going to play 65 games, but it’s hard. If you want to be a really good player, help your team get deep in the playoffs, and then come back at it and play 65 games again.

I’ve been All-NBA the last 9 years in a row— 7 times first team. It’s hard to be consistent. Just putting that rule there, it doesn’t give you a break. The margin of error is hard, like you get one injury and you’re off the race. I might not make it. Jokic might not make it. LeBron’s not going to make it. Wemby might not make it.

“I was all for it because it could benefit me at first but as I get older I’m like ‘ah take it off, take it off’, but these are the rules and you just gotta play by the rules. Who’s going to be available, just Shai? So it’s up in the air.”

So instead of debating for ‘who is a more deserving MVP’ this year the media is going to debate for ‘is 65 games a good rule for MVP race’

Honestly the rule is the rule, unless SGA, Giannis, Jokic, Luka, Wemby, both JB, Ant and Cade all played less than 65 games then they might consider changing it.

Edit: might be interesting to see who is the MVP by then, Maxey?

If you play less than 65 games you’re probably not the MVP.

No leave it the way it is. Injuries always happen in the nba and Giannis has been frequently injured lately as has Wemby throughout his career. Lebron is old, what do you expect will happen with him now till he retires? Only Jokic was a surprise injury and that happens to someone every year.

Non injured players start resting at certain points of the season if there wasn’t no 65 game rule. Players that play deserve to get rewarded.

If you barely miss the cutoffs, you can appeal for awards.

It’s called a “extraordinary circumstances challenge”

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/39318248/nba-65-game-rule-affect-mvp-race-supermax-deals

If players have a season-ending injury just before reaching the 65-game threshold, they could remain award eligible. That player would have to have played in at least 62 regular-season games, have suffered a season-ending injury and have played in at least 85% of his team’s games before getting hurt.

If you have a clean bill of health and usually participate in games, You should be good if you were playing most of the games before your injury

I may sound old school, but a threshold that allows you to miss over a month of the season seems generous to me. Every game off the court is another game not helping the team. The players want their cake and want to eat it too.

cut the total number of games down to 58 instead of 82…round robin twice for each team…fewer injuries, better competition

Lookin like the Fonz

This rule really doesn’t make a difference for MVP. Pretty much no MVP has won playing less than 65 games in an 82 game season.

What it does affect is all nba. What this does is incentivize bad teams to sit players more games so that they get smaller contracts for home grown stars in years where they plan to contend.

I genuinely cant believe how dumb people are being about the 65 game rule. We all knew it would affect people who have injuries too, now that its jokic people are acting shocked that it affects people with injuries. A cutoff is a cutoff if someone misses honors because of 1 game, thats tough but if u lower it u gonna have someone who misses honors with 1 game below that.

I believe statistically the 65 game rule is working to stars rest less games. Therefore its working and I fully support it. If that means ANT wins MVP instead of any of the top 5 best players in the league then kudos to ANT. He works really hard and is an amazing player, I will celebrate his achievement.

Can’t blame him for being honest.

Least he’s honest and doesn’t mind coming across as hypocritical. He was cool with it when he knew Jo and AD would have a tough time making it.

It’s a made up scenario but:

Star player out for the beginning of the season. Team plays poorly and is looking like a bottom feeder. Star player returns game 20. Team goes off, makes the playoffs, securing a top 3 seed.

How that isn’t an argument for said player to be MVP is beyond me. The 65 game rule is dumb.

I honestly wish whatever team I support prioritize post season over regular season. There’s clearly too many unnecessary games that doesn’t incentives anything.

There’s no reward for having the best season

You don’t deserve season accolades if you missed over 22% of a season.

gotta appreciate giannis for the honesty. giannis should be an all-nba 1st team every year he’s available for the next few years at least

People keep acting like of Shai wins it would be the worst thing ever like bradley beal won it or something lmao smh

Maybe I’m a boomer but I love the rule.

These awards aren’t supposed to say who the best players are. It’s who has the best season. If the best players will a quarter of the games or whatever, then they didn’t have enough of a season. Nobody is saying Jokic isn’t one of the best players in the world because he only played 55 games or whatever, they’re simply saying a full season award should require you to play most of the season

I don’t get the controversy.

Real

I think they should make the rule more like how extended sick leave works (or at least how I recall it worked at the company I was at that had it).

Change the rule to the player can’t have more than 17 games of unqualified leave. Then when a player is out for a consecutive stretch of games, the first 3 games are considered unqualified leave (regular PTO at my company). But from game 4 and on, it is not counted against them (extended sick leave at my company).

Change 3 to 4 or 5 or whatever to get the right balance, but in this way you can discourage intermittent resting while not penalizing single extended injuries. From that point the voters can decide if the total playing time is meaningful or not the award.

65 game minimum is fair. Let’s move on.

That statement is the problem with all of society. Everybody loves a system when it benefits them but when it’s time to give back and let other people benefit, people wanna tear the system down

Playing 79% of the regular season to be eligible for regular season honors is reasonable.

what he’s saying is objectively true. the rule is put in as an answer to load management. but it doesn’t even address that. outside of Bron, the other guys he mentioned are young, they just got hurt, they’re not healthy and load managing

Idk man i find Giannis pretty funny lmao

It’s a good rule. Can’t be MVP playing 60 games

Don’t tie the max to awards voted by media. Keep it only to statistical awards.

Jokic being out really highlights how dumb the rule is since he’s usually an ironman. Voters could already weigh in player availability before the rule was imposed, it was done solely to punish load management. Shai has to stay healthy otherwise we might be approaching injury replacement level mvps.

Anyone saying the rule is stupid or pointless is cluelessly dumb. It’s to discourage load management if you want those awards you have to actually play. That should be obvious and there should be a standard of availability set.

I think it’s fine to keep for mvp, if you wanted you can remove a few games from the threshold. All nba first it’s okay to keep I think as well but it shouldn’t be in place for all nba 2nd and 3rd teams.

I agree with the intent of the rule that this is to encourage players to play games rather than taking advantage of load management. At the end of the day this is about entertainment and games without the stars playing are just not as interesting. Spurs for example are fun to watch but it’s frustrating seeing Wemby be bubble wrapped and playing 20 minutes from an entertainment perspective alone

I wish I could just show up for work 80% of the time and still be the MVP.

Oh and get paid 10’s of millions

This will also make comparisons across eras even more fucky than they already are.

Acktually, Bill Walton only played 58 games in 1977-78, and he was elected by players instead of media, so his MVP doesn’t count by modern standards.

Honestly, it’s better that older players don’t quality because it allows younger plays to get hardware when it could benefit them (LeBron gets nothing from a fifth MVP) and also builds recognition for young up-and-comers rather than just handing the hardware to the same players year in and year out.

There has to be some sort of middle ground though because then you have guys resting games when they could play. If you think 82 games is too long then just shorten the season, but they won’t do so because they’ll make less money.

Also I would like to add that it’s not as if fans get refunds when players miss games. I went to a nets vs lakers game where LeBron and AD both didn’t play. They’re still charging full price

Giannis at 60 games wouldn’t be MVP over Jokic at 60 games, who wouldn’t be MVP over SGA at 70 games. All NBA is where this rule matters, which was stupid to tie to contracts, but the rule just shouldn’t exist.

MVP should not be a regular season award. It should include the playoffs.

Just say, “I’m good with it until negatively impacts me.”

Giannis IS an American now.

The NBA season should be 50 games tops

Has anyone ever won an award having played fewer than 65 games (before the rule)?

Edit: I looked it up and LeBron and Giannis won MVP playing fewer but both were impacted by COVID or a lockout. Ja won MIP playing only 57 games and Gobert got DPOY playing only 57.

This conversation is moot in my opinion.

they should just normalize dividing all stats by 82 to determine post season accolades

you average 35/9/9 playing 56 games? but only 24/6/6 if accounting for a full season? Great you’re clearly not the MVP.

if you want to maintain better stats and win awards, play more games.

i just dont get whats the point of regular season awards anyways

It’s a very fair metric. A quick search on basketball reference has every MVP winner besides 5 who have played at least 65 games. And I believe 2 of those were lockout shortened seasons, 1 was COVID, 1 was Bill Walton which I’m not sure if there was a lockout or that was just injuries. And then Cousy in 1957 with 64 games. So yea… It’s a very fair metric.

It would be better if it were just 65 games to qualify for MVP amd DPOTY but only 60 to qualify for the All-NBA teams. Or 60 for all.

3 quarters of a season is plenty

All NBA has always had years where the 3rd team was weak but missing multiple top 10 guys because they only played 75% of games when the entire league averages way less is bad for the award. 

The real solution to this is to reduce the amount of regular season games in a year from 82 to like 50-60. And spread them out more.

We all know they won’t do it because of $$$, but man would it help improving the sport.

On the other hand, it creates a bit of exposure for younger players that would never win the popular vote from entrenched veterans that have lost a step.

Not Lebron 😩😂😂

Why so definitive lmao

They should have consecutively missed games count less.

Missing 20 x 1 game for rest should be penalized harder than missing 2 x 10 games for two separate contusions.

I feel like MVP should be associated with how important you were to your team and the league for that specific season. If you sit out 25 games, you literally had 0 importance those games.

“One injury and you’re off the race”

Yeah, because without injuries guys still only want to play 70 games.

If an injury costs you 17 games of a season (assuming guys target playing an 82 game season) that’s the equivalent of being out for at least a month.

The average injury isn’t taking a guy out for an entire month.

So guys playing 82 games a year and missing a week here and there would still qualify for the 65 game minimum.

The issue is that guys sit out so much and then injuries on top of that mean they only play 60 games if even that.

I don’t see anyone in the NHL, where they also play 82 games, complaining that guys are sitting out or not playing enough games.

Availability is valuable

We also have to acknowledge that a lot of NBA guys don’t want do play. Maybe 58 is a better number. It gives you more cushion.

I literally don’t understand how 65 is so hard to get. Hockey stars play all 82 game seasons, and they’re playing full contact while flying at skating speed.

I know its cliche but availability is the best ability. So the 65 game rule in spirit - has lots of merit to it.

However, I think they could reduce it to something more reasonable like 50 games. Because then you are still playing in the majority of your team’s game but you cannot afford to have some margins to rest yourself after a tough back to back or lets that strain heal before it snowballs into a much more major season ending/career altering injury - which nobody wants.