Yao Ming would have been ineligible for almost all of his all nba teams.😓😭

I think we should appreciate the work this post took. Good job, OP

Wow. Respect for putting the work in to understand this.

Quality work. Although it is paramount that readers keep in mind this from the opening paragraphs: “Note that having such a rule would’ve likely affected how often players rested games, so this exercise doesn’t indicate who would’ve been All-NBA had the rule been in place from the start. Everything here is post hoc.”

Danilo Gallinari making 3rd team all NBA in 2019 is crazy lmao

Brian windhorst is going to read this and talk about it on first take like he thought of it lol

Great work OP but I think if the rule was in place all those years, a lot of those borderline guys woulda played through minor stuff to meet the 65 games. If you think that’s a good or bad thing is up to you

Randle 1st team would’ve got the rule removed lol

It’s not surprising that this rule made little difference pre 2020s.

this is some JxmyHighroller type stat sheet before the video comes out xD

Kind of funny that Shaq and Barkley both would not have been eligible and they bitch about the modern players a lot.

Honestly this makes me want to keep the 65 game rule more. Missing over 30% of the season and getting all NBA honors is insane.

Great stuff here OP. Thanks.

So with your formula, these are the top 5 biggest “winners” and Top 5 biggest “losers.”

Winners

1. Al Horford (+3 Selections)
   
2. Rudy Gobert (+2 Selections)
   
3. Steve Nash (+2 Selections)
   
4. Marcus Camby (+2 Selections)
   
5. Ben Wallace (+2 Selections)
   

Losers

1. Shaq (-4 Selections)
   
2. LeBron James (-4 Selections)
   
3. Yao Ming (-3 Selections)
   
4. Joel Embiid (-3 Selections)
   
5. DeMarcus Cousins (-2 Selections)
   

EDIT: Would love to see this for All Defense too.

Shout out to all the years with no changes. Just dudes balling.

OP, I’d love to see a summary of the biggest risers and fallers

Quite a few ⁶³⁄₆₄ gamers that woulda just played one more game to become eligible

Imagine Sam Cassell having an All-NBA First Team. I know he’s a very underrated point guard, but it’s wild to think about.

Thank you for the effort OP.

From the results it seems clear to me that voters have historically done a pretty good job in accounting for durability and games played in their All-NBA voting.

There was no need to infantilize the voters by adding the arbitrary 65 game requirement; they’re more than capable of making the games-played judgement on their own.

Was waiting for someone to post something like this lol

Don’t have an issue with 99% of this

I dont hate the games played rule but I think it should be 60-63 OR some minutes threshold

To me, this just illustrates why it’s a GOOD rule because it only really makes a difference in the last couple years thanks to “Load Management.”

Love the effort. Enjoyable read thanks

This is a high quality post. The only thing is, I would like to check to see who missed those games due to load management vs injury. I’d imagine Lebron would have played in more games and made those all-nba teams. But I also think he would have scored less than 10 way sooner in his career.

It looks like this rule wouldn’t have affected any of Michael Jordan’s All-NBA seasons.

Whereas players like LeBron and Shaq each lose 4, and Curry loses 3.

I don’t know exactly what to infer from that, but I feel like it means something.

Interesting!

Great work OP

This is interesting, it’s only the most recent 3 years here that are showing particularly much diversion. Pre-2019 it’s only 1-2 guys a year. Why is that?

Julius Randle All-NBA first team 🥶

The reality is that the 65-game rule is just a reflection of the devaluing of the regular season. It became necessary because players started missing regular-season games that they probably aren’t 100% for, but can play because of the ‘just stay healthy for the playoffs’ mentality the league has adopted since 73-9. Maybe the rule isn’t the right way to fix that, but it needs to be fixed one way or another. Also, this generation of journalists vote more on a reflection of “who are the best player in the league” rather than “who had the best season/most impact” hence more people with less games.

Upvoting for the sheer effort it took to do this

Honestly this is great work. Thank you.

I am against the 65 game rule, but there is no question that it did effectively fight the problem it was designed to fight. Sitting your stars.

This is interesting. At the beginning of the list I was thinking the 65-game rule kind of sucked looking at how many of the actual best players were omitted each year. Kept scrolling and realized how it’s actually just the recent insane increase in load management lol

I draw two conclusions from this:

1. Voters already take games played into consideration, as much of the changes are in the 3rd team and to a lesser extend the 2nd team. 1st teams are largely intact.

2. A playing time rule was necessary, as the issue of minutes/games quickly became pretty bad in the last few years.

I love this! This recognizes the players who have been putting in the work but are overshadowed by name recognition. Awards are earned, not gifted after missing nearly 2 months or more every season. It really highlights how the worst offenders got away with it purely by playing a shade more than half a season (effectively missed around 3 months): ‘06 Yao with 46 games, ‘97 Pippen with 44 games and ‘94 Rodman with 44 games. If I was ‘06 Camby, ‘97 Walker and ‘94 Mashburn I’d be running my mouth to anyone that can hear about how these dudes sat on their ass for half a season and got recognition.

But as another commentor pointed out, if the rule was in place, Shaq (‘97), Kobe (‘04, ‘05), Gasol (‘09), Paul/Parker (‘13) and more would’ve played a handful of more games to make it.

First of all, fantastic work! That took a lot of effort. Please enjoy my imaginary internet points.

It should also probably be noted that players that were close to hitting the game number may have found a way to do it. Lots of those players were losing their spot despite being within 5 games. Especially in the Rose-Rule era, a lot of players would have tried to find a way to get those games because it may have had a lot more meaning on their next contract.

I would not have a problem woth any of these teams

You’re a real sicko and I genuinely applaud your dedication to crunching the numbers.

JB/JT All-NBA is so tuff😮‍💨

just a minor quibble – if the player knows that they are 1-2 games from losing elibility, I guarantee you that player plays one more game (unless they have a season ending injury). E.g. Luka in 2023 would have played one more game than losing that elibility.

Incredibly high-effort posting. Just, absolute power-posting right here.

Huge thanks for this post - great data and excellent presentation.

As someone on the fence about the rule, this post actually had the opposite impact of what I expected.

I thought I’d be more against the rule b/c of how much it would screw with the historical teams, but seeing it jump in 2018 and then jump again in 2022, while having almost negligible impact before that, I begrudgingly moved to being more in favor of the rule.

The NBA had a new and quickly worsening problem that has a horrible impact on fans, so punishing the offenders seems worth the side effect of unfortunately punishing some players who simply had bad luck.

Amazing to see the increase in the number of players that must be subbed. Players today are soft.

It’s funny everyone used this to shit on Embiid now all of a sudden everyone is understanding… Lol this league is fried and the fans terrible

Outstanding work

without distinguishing which were rest days and which were injury related it would be tough to get a clear picture of how this rule affects player participation. i think in a couple years when there are more data. The NBA will probably either make tweaks or let it stand.

Might i ask where did you get all these data from?

Who were All NBA 1st team in 12-13, the last year where there would be no edits?

Nice work putting this together! 4x All NBA would definitely put Horford in the HOF, which I think he still makes it, but it’s close

This post deserves so much more shine than it’s getting. You put in a ton of work and I appreciate it. It’s amazing how some of the all-time greats in the NBA’s history, lose a bunch of résumé padding.

65 game rule definitely needs to be lowered or abolished. I thought, for the most part of the people voting had to good enough discretion on their own.

Great work, thank you for this

Still it’s pretty evident that 1st rounders did clear the threshold in most of the years.

This really cements my support for the rule. Maybe lower it to 60 games, but some of these noms are egregious. Pippen 3rd team with only 44 games and Yao 2nd team with 46? Disgusting

The number of players replaced shows exactly why this rule was put in place - over time, more and more players fall outside qualification

This doesn’t mean the rule is the right solution. It just shows WHAT it’s trying to solve.

Most surprising thing is that Sam Casell was awarded 2nd team all nba in his career.

Does this assume that the presence of the rule would have had no impact on any counts of games played? Not to downplay the effort, it’s appreciated, but I wonder if that would have changed things as well.

Excellent work OP. It’s insane how few long term injuries to stars there were prior to the 2020 season.

His story historical

I’m glad the NBA tried something, but this ain’t it

I fucking LOVE posts like this one. I’m glad people recognize the work put into it.

This is what /r/NBA used to be like. Great post, thank you.

Amazing work.

I like the idea in the NBPA announcement thread that they should look into a minutes and/or games restriction.

Something like 1850 minutes or 65 games. So if you’re playing elite in 55 games (two thirds of the season), with an average 33.6 minutes (within the ball park of star starter minutes) you’re in consideration. So players arent pressured to play on game days they shouldn’t, but be pressured to play “preseason” minutes on games that would otherwise be rest days. Though I guess this would then affect stats which would affect voting. Idk…

Tons of respect for the work you did here. Salute.

This is great work however with 1 caveat, guys who were 1 or 2 games from the threshold from resting probably would have just played those games in order to make the all nba team.

I think it also would have been useful to just list a summary table giving the player total appearances before and after applying the criteria. Rather than listing out all the teams by year.

David Lee was the craziest pull in all of these

Seems like there are more injuries nowadays

High quality post OP. Shoutout to ya

Hindsight is tough because you would have to assume that with such a rule in place, many of these absences don’t occur.

Fun post, gj. LeBron getting all nba with 44 games played lol. There were more players at 64 than I thought.

This just shows the 65 rule is great. Pre 2020 either a player would miss it by a few games in which case they probably play an extra game to reach the limit, or its egregious like Yao playing less than 50 games.

Especially now because all nba teams are position less, there arent going to be any super unqualified players making it.

High quality work!

Great stuff
IMO they should reduce it, either to 60 games or 57 games (70% played)
If the NBPA really hated it, just make it 50 game or 41 games (50% played), making the rules just for formality

I love that players are stressed out about missing games and missing out on that glory and enhanced pay. That was literally the whole point of the rule and now we are walking it back a few seasons later because players continue to miss games (that 90% of the time they do not have to be missing) and are crying about it and brainwashing you all.

The NBA regular season is a joke of a product. Buying tickets to see a game live is not enticing because ¹⁄₄ of the time at least one of your favorite players will not be performing. I don’t care about the marginal increase in injuries because “players have to run more!” These days.

The sport is failing and this is exactly what needs to stay to keep interest and satisfaction from watching games high. Enough of this shit already.

Appreciate your service. 

Desmond Bane all-nba made me cringe

Interesting (used very sarcastically) how the further down the list you go the less impact this would have.

Almost as if this rule was in a direct response to a growing number of players making an active choice to take more rest games, to the point they were missing up to or more than a quarter of the entire season.

Many included things like injuries, but obviously just injuries don’t account for a massive swing in these occurrences happening with many names of otherwise relatively durable players having this happen multiple seasons in a row.

I don’t think the 65 game rule is a problem. The solution is opening up the exceptions a bit for major injuries, such as the current case for Cunningham, but otherwise if you want to make these teams and win some awards play the games.

And honestly, this would fix a lot of past mistakes too.

I don’t care how much better you are, if you play a number of games that starts with a 4 you shouldn’t be on an All NBA team. It diminishes the awards giving it to guys barely playing over half a season. I didn’t realize how many cases of that there were in the past and its horrendous that they denied guys who were full time contributors to give the award on name value to someone who barely scraped through more than half a season.

This is incredible work. Salute 🫡

But notice how a lot less all-NBA players were ineligible in the past. Wasn’t the point of the 65-game threshold to disincentivize players from missing games?

All this post tells me is that Pascal Siakam truly is one of the greats. Iron man.

Just 1-2 ineligible a year for decades. Now 4-6 a year. This is a pro 65 game rule post

You can really see that it was a recent phenomenon for guys to miss games and make all NBA. Just shows how recent of pace of game and how important reputation was to make the all NBA team.

I think 65 game is too high though, make it 60 and I think its more fair since guys wanna play but get injured for a month sometimes

I appreciate your unemployment to make this for us 🫶

Great post.

I just don’t understand why they don’t just not have a minimum and then tell the voters to factor in games played. Like 20-5-5 for 82 games is literally more valuable than 25-6-6 for 50 games it’s that simple.

If someone drops 50 a game and plays 50 games they are probably still the MVP in literal terms.

I know it’s AI, but I love seeing the numbers🤷🏻‍♂️

Classic, respect

Bronny?

Fantastic post.

Per some additional math I did, from 1988-1999, there was an average of 1 all-nba player per year who missed the 65 game threshold. Almost all of those guys being in the 3rd team (⁸⁄₁₁), with the exception of one 1st team player in 11 years-Shaq in ‘98.

From 00-09, that number increased to 1.5 players per year, still mainly being on 2nd (⁵⁄₁₅) and 3rd team (⁸⁄₁₅) with the exception of two 1st team all-nba players-Kobe in ‘04 and Shaq in ‘06.

From 2010-2019, the number increased again to an average of 2.2 players per year with ¹⁴⁄₂₂ being on the 3rd team and ⁷⁄₂₂ being on the 2nd team. Even with the increase, only one 1st team player made the cut: Chris Paul in 2014 with 62 games player.

From there, the average jumped massively in the 2020’s with an average of 6.5 players per year (8.3 taking out ‘19-20). 2023 was also the first year where multiple 1st team all-nba players were rewarded without playing 65 games-Giannis and Luka.

It’s a bit late over here so my math may be a bit off, and there’s definitely more stats I can dive into, but overall it was pretty eye opening. It seems that, besides a few outliers, there was massive jumps around 2014, 2018, and 2021. Also worth noting that the last time every all-nba team hit a 65 game threshold was in 2012-2013. I find that timeline coincides with a lot of the casual viewer’s outlook starting to trend downwards about the sport i.e. the 3 point shooting, changes in defense, crappy all star games, and obviously the players not playing-which has all lead to a decline in ratings.

So while I understand some complaints about the rule, like some exceptions for 2nd or 3rd team guys making it, I think this post puts me in even more of a pro-65 game rule camp. The load management has clearly gotten completely out of hand the last 5 years, which forced Silver’s hand to implement something.

And before people complain about the schedule needing to be fixed so guys can player more, please note that the two lock out seasons listed here, where teams had to play 5 games in 7 nights and 3 in a row at times, there was a total of one all-nba player who did not meet the threshold of playing 80% of the season out of 30 players. And in the season that followed, there were zero players that missed the mark. So…the math is not adding up.

I thibk this post proved the rule makes sense. Just also add a minutes played threshold.

So it wouldn’t have made a big difference until 2020. What happened in 2020, I wonder???

Seems like something happened around ²⁰⁰⁸⁄₂₀₀₉ and later to affect players’ longevity.

What sticks out to me is LBJ hasn’t topped 56 games in 9 years.

I came up with the solution for this month ago and I really think the NBA needs to consider it. Basically you have a number of games that you consider to be 100% to make you eligible, I would suggest raising it to 70. At that point anyone who plays 70 games receives 100% of the votes that they receive for awards. After that you start losing a percentage for games you miss. So you play 63 games you only get 90% of the votes/points. Basically it becomes harder to win the awards for those who miss a lot of games but if someone is so overwhelming in the games they play, they can still win. This helps someone who takes a genuine injury that costs them say 20 games but is dominant in the 62 they play. I think it’s a fair method.

Yeah. The rule is trash.

It seems like we saw the biggest changes right before the rule kicked in, which should help understand also why it was imposed. Lebron, Steph and KD will all get less All NBA and awards shares in general, and for the NBA is not a good thing considering these 3 were basically the face of the league for a decade.

I want to bump uglies with your tism

So my take is that this tule is most hard on Centers and next is on a couple of high level guards that rely on speed. Historically, It barely affects the 1st team outside of centers, it mainly hits the 3rd team. These days it decimates the list further proving that todays stars dont play enough.

57 games is approximately 70% of the season. Feels like a happy compromise no?

The amount of players not meeting the threshold did increase over time

crazy work OP

Very interesting!