Name	MVP Year	Games Played / Total Games	Reason for Shortened Season
Karl Malone	1998-99	49 / 50	Lockout
Bill Walton	1977-78	58 / 82
LeBron James	2011-12	62 / 66	Lockout
Giannis Antetokounmpo	2019-20	63 / 73	COVID

DeepJunglePowerWild | Celtics

34 | 3 hours ago

Everybody complains about players not playing, the league then makes a rule to incentivize against top players sitting out and people immediately complain about it.

There’s no winning for them with the majority of fans.

joomla00

10 | 3 hours ago

The real sport is omplainin and trash talking. Basketball is just the vehicle

HitboxOfASnail | Thunder

4 | 2 hours ago

there’s no winning. but also the discourse is heavily slanted depending on which players are actually affected.

Jokic being at risk caused near mass hysteria. I doubt SGA missing the rule would cause any backlash from most of online fans. people would probably celebrate opening the door for wemby or Luka.

ThinkingMSF | Celtics

2 | an hour ago

Jokic being at risk caused near mass hysteria.

nothing triggers r/nba harder than their Great White Hope not being slathered with praise

ThinkingMSF | Celtics

5 | an hour ago

i spent hundreds to watch the lakers come to boston a few years back only for lebron and ad to sit

fuck everyone whining about this,

DeepJunglePowerWild | Celtics

1 | an hour ago

I agree, personally I won’t spend money on tickets to any big matchups anymore… it’s just not worth it. I’ll take a Monday or Tuesday vs a bottom team every time over a matchup against top teams because your going to pay a ton of money and it feels like half the time or more you won’t see the stars.

Own-Celebration4239

1 | 5 minutes ago

I hear you, but have you considered the millionaires are tired and need time off from playing a kids game?

C-House12

1 | 3 hours ago

Every year the playoffs is won by who remains the healthiest. Many players can’t slog out an 82 game season and remain healthy for the playoffs. Fans complain when primetime slots or tickets they bought don’t have the main draws. The solution is obvious but it hits people’s pockets. Play less games.

DeepJunglePowerWild | Celtics

1 | 2 hours ago

I don’t disagree, the 65 game thing is a half measure by the NBA to try to have their cake and eat it too

Neveraththesmith

1 | 39 minutes ago

Maybe people should understand that players 82 games is too much to ask for in this modern NBA?

HellenicHedge34 | Bucks

0 | an hour ago

There shouldn’t be a financial incentive attached to the All-NBA teams. That alone would resolve many of these problems

DeepJunglePowerWild | Celtics

1 | an hour ago

Hard agree, putting teams futures and players financials in the hands of voters and subjective awards was silly to begin with. The 65 games tying to that is even sillier. If a team wants to pay their star a supermax they shouldn’t lose that bargaining power in free agency because he got hurt the prior year and played sub 65 games.

PsychoM | Raptors

-1 | 3 hours ago

Because the rule is hamfisted and doesn’t actually address the issue at hand. Stars aren’t playing any more or less than before the rule was implemented, all the 65 game rule does is add a lot of noise in the media and let the NBA say “we did our best” while doing nothing at all.

Lower the amount of games, more independent doctors, add harsher penalties for sitting healthy players. 65 game rule does nothing except distract from the fact the NBA doesn’t want to fix the issue because it hurts total revenue

ImpossibleCategory | Raptors

5 | 3 hours ago

Stars aren’t playing any more or less than before the rule was implemented

wrong, the first year it was implemented stars were definitely playing more and its no coincidence

PsychoM | Raptors

0 | 2 hours ago

That is not proof, if you want proof here you go:

Let’s look at the top 10 in Player Efficiency Rating per season, as /48 stat it’s a decent measure of who was playing the best basketball while on the floor and should be in MVP conversation while not factoring in games played.

Year	Avg Games Played for top 10 in PER
‘25-‘26	57.2 (on pace for ~60.5)
‘24-‘25	64.25
‘23-‘24 (65 game rule introduced)	71.5
‘22-‘23	61.1
‘21-‘22	65.5
‘20-‘21	58.9 (shortened season, pace 67.08)

So yes the first year had a bump in games played for the top 10 PER players but every year since has regressed back to the average before the rule was implemented. Admittedly it’s a small sample size but put some math to the claims

Source bbref

ImpossibleCategory | Raptors

2 | 2 hours ago

why are you just filtering PER for top 10 players. There are whole bunch of stars who are big names who wont statistically fall in the top 10 that you’re just arbitrarily excluding.

Players were blatantly sitting out games against tanking teams or unimportant games before this rule, and now you don’t see it happen

PsychoM | Raptors

2 | an hour ago

I filtered by top 10 because I was inputting data manually, but okay I made a spreadsheet that handles it automatically for whatever amount of players I want with automatic season pace adjustment

Year	Top 30	Top 50	Top 75
‘25-26	68.29	69.05	70.54
‘24-25	67.37	67.06	67.69
‘23-24 (65 rule)	68.77	69.42	70.16
‘22-23	64.13	66.04	67.21
‘21-22	65.73	66.96	68.15
‘20-21	67.88	68.79	68.15
‘19-20	70.99	71.13	71.75
‘18-19	72.67	72.24	73.21

So it does look like the rule did bump up numbers a bit more if you look past 10 and into more data, but it is not at the same levels as pre-bubble. It’s more of a mixed result than I was expecting, I was thinking the result would be more negligible. So I’m actually leaning more towards agreeing with your point, anecdotally it doesn’t feel like anything has changed but it’s good to see the data though. The data is still very noisy though without enough years to really validate a trend.

flaming_burrito_ | Wizards

0 | an hour ago

First, this is cherry-picked to hell. You only selected 10 players for a reason, because those are the ones that fit the narrative. That’s not a large enough sample size and could have happened just because those players happened to be healthy. This trend didn’t even maintain past that year. In the 24-25 season:

Leonard - 37 games

Zion - 30 games

Dame - 58, and out this whole season due to a torn Achilles

Harden - 79 games

Paul George - 41

Luka - 50

Curry - 70

KD - 62

Lebron - 70

Anthony Davis - 51

Hmm, that’s weird, your examples seem to completely break down only one year later. Almost like you should never base any form of statistical analysis on a small sample size over such a small timeframe.

mrgoodwalker | Spurs

12 | 4 hours ago

Should still be able to get all nba honors though

jm3546 | Thunder

4 | 3 hours ago

Especially because of contract implications.

A player who makes an all-NBA team in their 3rd season but only plays 60 games in their 4th, isn’t rose rule eligible.

But a player who only plays 60 games in their 3rd season and makes all-NBA in their 4th season is eligible for the full 30% 5-year deal.

Could be the same caliber of player but one is eligible while the other isn’t.

Imo they should just change the rose rule to MVP, DPOY, or all-NBA first team in 2 out of the previous 3 seasons. But if they aren’t going to do that, at least pull the all-NBA requirement down to like 50 games.

darthllama

14 | 3 hours ago

Which is a great demonstration of why the rule is unnecessary. Voters already take playing time into consideration.

Now we’ve got a system where a player can win MVP because they hit an arbitrary benchmark. I’d rather have 64 games of Jokic or SGA than 70 games of Jaylen Brown

lialialia20 | Timberwolves

11 | 3 hours ago

lmao that’s not the reason for the rule genius

poopy_mc_pantsy

-3 | 2 hours ago

is it that it’s supposed to motivate Cade Cunningham to play through a collapsed lung so he can still lose MVP

BBallHunter | Thunder

-1 | 3 hours ago

Someone with common sense.

OnionFutureWolfGang

11 | 4 hours ago

The important thing to get with Walton is that the Blazers were 48-10 with him and 10-14 without, and he was famously a player where the box score stats didn’t really do him justice.

In other words, the only player to have won after playing less than 65 games won in part because the games they missed helped their case.

There was never a need for the 65-game rule. The one time it was “broken” was the exact scenario that it probably should have been broken for.

That’s before you even get to the requirement also existing for All-NBA.

Chesscrabble11

6 | 4 hours ago

Again. As people said.

65 games rule is very ok for MVP.

But it is very very bad for All NBA teams.

Recent_Surprise_7391 | Suns

6 | 3 hours ago

Why do yall act like you’re the ones getting bonuses with players making all NBA teams. NBA puts the 65 game limit so when you show up to the arena on a Thursday night you get to watch the stars and not the second strings

PrimeTimeInc | Hornets

4 | 3 hours ago

These dumb shits will just move the goalposts again if the NBA changes the rules to accommodate whatever their fancy is this time. Can’t win with some people

jackaholicus | Mavericks

3 | 3 hours ago

I don’t think this really works though.

Recent_Surprise_7391 | Suns

1 | 3 hours ago

I personally think that the amount of votes for all NBA teams should we weighed based on the amount of games you play, so a player who plays more games has their points worth more, but the 65 game rule is way better than nothing

Uncle_Freddy | SAS

0 | an hour ago

You don’t need to be personally affected by something to understand the mechanism behind it and/or why it’s bad and flawed. Extends well beyond basketball fwiw

Recent_Surprise_7391 | Suns

2 | an hour ago

The 65 game minimum is good because I’d rather watch players on the court than on the bench. God some nba fans are cooked

Ok-Tree4365

-1 | 3 hours ago

Because “load management” was never as big of an issue as ESPN and the like made it out to be.

Recent_Surprise_7391 | Suns

1 | 3 hours ago

No, it’s a huge issue and it’s pathetic how yall defend people spending money just to see all the starters on the bench

traw056 | Thunder

3 | 3 hours ago

65 game rule is perfectly fine for first team and major awards. A player who misses 20% of the season should absolutely not be winning those award or accolades. Everyone is saying “trust the voters” but why would we do that when those voters include the guy that voted Sabonis as top 3 in mvp talks, 1st team all defensive, and 3rd in dpoy voting? Those same voters also gave Klay Thompson an MVP vote during the prime curry years.

EssentIYO | Magic

1 | 7 minutes ago

That should give this sub a vote instead.

No-Alternative2897

2 | 4 hours ago

Availability is the best ability especially when players are these good and you have to nitpick every little thing to get an MVP. Keep the 65 game threshold or 80% games played if they shorten the season(unlikely)

aBakeinthelife | Pistons

1 | 4 hours ago

He was also given it after winning the championship, which is bullshit.

I love Bill Walton and I’m sure this will upset some Portland fans, but Gervin probably deserved it(I wasn’t alive then so i’m not going off anything more than highlights and box score, so grain of salt i guess).

KL2ConspireLLC | San Diego Clippers

3 | 3 hours ago

They won the championship the previous season, and they were 50-10 when he was injured for the season. They went 8-14 the rest of the season.

I wasn’t alive then so i’m not going off anything more than highlights and box score, so grain of salt i guess

Walton was considered the best defensive player in the league so basing your opinion on boxscores and highlights is just going to lead to having an uninformed opinion.

HokageEzio | Knicks

2 | 4 hours ago

Why is it bullshit that he won MVP after winning the championship?

Omega-Toad-7017 | Bulls

1 | 5 minutes ago

Playoffs almost certainly tainted the perception

nba2k11er | Warriors

1 | 4 hours ago

So the only point of the rule is to say Walton didn’t deserve his. Still doesn’t really make sense to me.

HenrikCrown | Pelicans

3 | 3 hours ago

Walton deserved it

He was like Jokic without the scoring and way more rim protection

5 assists a game was gaudy back then for a big man

Ok-Tree4365

2 | 4 hours ago

And this is why the 65-game rule is dumb. Voters were not voting (in any significant way) players who played less than about 65 games for any of the end of season awards. If Cade (for example) plays 63 games, and Pascal Siakam plays 65, does Siakam deserve All NBA over Cade?

There’s even weirder rules about minutes played that kept Kris Dunn (for example) from being eligible for All Defense last season. He played 74 games and averaged 24 mpg, but played between 19:00 and 19:59 too many times to qualify, despite most major public voters said they would vote him for First Team All Defense if they could. What good does that rule accomplish?

BBallHunter | Thunder

2 | 3 hours ago

To hop on, let me get this straight.

As of right now, Jokic would be in the all nba first team.

But if he misses just 2 more games, he’d be completely left out of the ballot.

And this makes sense, why????

AaronNesmith | Pacers

1 | 3 hours ago

It makes sense because a line has to be drawn somewhere, and something needed to be done to encourage players/coaching staffs to have stars sit out less

In 2022-2023, the average all-NBA player played 66.9 games. Tatum was the only guy on the 1st or 2nd team that played 70. There were 3 all NBA players under 60 games

In 2024-2025, the average all-NBA player played 74.0 games. Everyone besides Kawhi on the 1st and 2nd team played 70+ games.

Last season, the average all-NBA player played 71.6 games. Only Giannis and Brunson made the 1st and 2nd team all-NBA and played less than 70 games.

Players and coaching staff don’t want to be even close to that 65game minimum if they can avoid it, so they are load managing their stars less. This sucks for Cade that he may not make all-NBA now, but there was a reason this change was mostly applauded at the time. The NBA had a problem of stars sitting out games, and this was part of the change that fixed it

wormhole222 | Heat

1 | an hour ago

Then fix that by forcing players to play more or by reducing games. Awards should be more nuanced.

AaronNesmith | Pacers

1 | 32 minutes ago

I am skeptical that reducing games without a game minimum would have fixed load management. And I am also cool with other changes that get players to play more!

Neveraththesmith

0 | 35 minutes ago

“Should sit out less” Why? The only to actually change that is my making the regular season have less games.

AaronNesmith | Pacers

1 | 33 minutes ago

I am very neutral on the NBA reducing the number of games. I could go either way.

But I do believe that players/coaching staffs would have still load managed stars if there wasn’t a game minimum and also a short schedule. Cause it happened in 2020-2021 still

“Should sit out less” Why?

Because the point of being an NBA player is to play games.

Neveraththesmith

1 | 23 minutes ago

Expecting 82 games to all be played is just misunderstanding how the sport has evolved. This isn’t the 1990s the amount of players who play 82 games is going down for a reason. The human body can’t take 82 games of modern NBA basketball.

RichAbbreviations966 | Celtics

1 | 4 hours ago

Jaylen Brown is really gonna win the most bs MVP huh?

Quiet_Zombie_3498 | Thunder

8 | 4 hours ago

Why would he win it over Shai?

BBallHunter | Thunder

2 | 3 hours ago

Shai is a minor ankle sprain away from being eligible. That’s the point.

Quiet_Zombie_3498 | Thunder

3 | 3 hours ago

I think you mean ineligible, but I see your point.

BBallHunter | Thunder

2 | 3 hours ago

Yeah, sorry.

Quiet_Zombie_3498 | Thunder

1 | 3 hours ago

No worries, but let’s both do a quick little prayer that nothing happens to Shai’s precious ankles.

BBallHunter | Thunder

2 | 3 hours ago

I just think the rule is dumb and we are on the verge of multiple superstars missing out on being eligible when in previous years, 64 games would have been enough for a lot of voters.

Quiet_Zombie_3498 | Thunder

1 | 3 hours ago

I don’t disagree, at least when it comes to All Star and all of those things. MVP I can see the argument for, but even still the threshold seems too high.

BBallHunter | Thunder

1 | 3 hours ago

Same thing for MVP. It just doesn’t make sense. As of right now, Shai’s MVP probability is like 90%. Let’s say that.

If he misses just 5 games due to a legit injury, it goes from 90% to freaking 0? He plays 65 and is the MVP. He plays 64 and gets no votes?

DayComprehensive1078

0 | 4 hours ago

Should lower the games needed a bit imo. Not to 58, but maybe like 62 or 63.

Or keep it at 65 BUT make it a “soft” requirement and have some sort of point system that deducts from their points for awards for each extra missed game. Could make it increasingly more punishing the more games you miss

jackaholicus | Mavericks

3 | 3 hours ago

58 makes the most sense, that’s the games needed to qualify for the per game leaderboards n

samhit_n | Lakers

0 | 3 hours ago

Yeah, this is why I didn’t understand all the complaining about this requirement for the MVP award.

However, criticisms about the 65 game requirement for All-NBA teams are valid. Many players in the past made those teams despite missing lots of games with injuries. With this requirement, players who would have never been considered for an All-NBA have a chance just by playing 65 games.

Recent_Surprise_7391 | Suns

0 | 3 hours ago

The best solution is having a weighted average of games played for the votes. A player who plays all games has a vote multiplier of 1.1 and a player who only plays 65 games has a multiplier of like .9 on votes. Or even making the votes worth the percentage of games they played.

This makes it so every additional game played can contribute to the MVP, first team case of a player and not be some arbitrary cutoff, which players can still sit for as long as they make that number

Ok-Tree4365

2 | 3 hours ago

Why reward players because they didn’t accidentally step on someone’s shoe and sprain their ankle, or get taken out mid air and crack open their head? Trust the voters to know that players played when they were healthy.

PanthalassaRo | Knicks

0 | 3 hours ago

Such coincidence Embiid played 66 games in his “MVP season” and the rule was implemented afterwards.

Rich2364

-1 | 4 hours ago

The 65-game rule is dumb, especially for all NBA teams. This should be common knowledge. Cade and Ant are really gonna be left off all NBA teams.

Since the NBA adopted the 82-game regular season in 1967-68, Bill Walton is the only player to win MVP (1977-78) while playing fewer than 65 games (58) in a non-shortened season