The games played rule is less about fairness and more about incentivizing stars to play games so fans feel like their tickets are worth the money. The League prefers a star to play 24 minutes in two games than 48 minutes in one.

But I do think you have a point that Vic’s case should be held back by the minutes restrictions he’s been on. Realistically I think it will be, I doubt he’ll win this year with it hanging over his head plus the insane competition from SGA, Jokic and Luka, and his recent surge to #2 / #1 just feels like recency bias and the NBA pushing it for drama when SGA’s been a lock since Jokic’s injury.

Wemby is not winning MVP, this is just gambling companies trying to manipulate betting odds so people would waste their money, and it’s unfortunately working

When did Wemby become the front runner? I swear he was in like third a week ago.

Nah. I rather see stars play more games than minutes. It will be more beneficial to fans at the end of the day.

jesus

i knew the minutes were low but that looks so bad in comparison

What does front runner mean? Because wemby isn’t the favorite. 

Bro is not the front runner

“than the guy leading the MVP race” says another victim of the gambling propaganda machine

Tbf it’s better for fans to see a player for 20 minutes than for 0. 

Pretty awesome for Victor to still be in the MVP convos despite his relative minutes played. He must be really good during the minutes he does play.

I never seen “fans” complaining about a rule that incentivizes players to play more.

Who gives a fuck if they miss out on awards. Play the games. Shit is too expensive for the stars to not be there

First I’m hearing of Wemby being the front runner. It’s SGA’s 100% unless something drastic happens in the last several games.

For me, it just says that Wemby is more impactful and valuable with less minutes than Lebron ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I keep seeing people try to bring this up to discredit his case

I see it the opposite. Victor’s been off a minute’s restriction for a hot minute. He simply… Hasnt needed to play a lot of minutes. All the numbers back it up too. When he’s been on the court the last 3 months. San Antonio has simply been pulverizing teams So completely that there’s very rarely been situations where he needs to play 35 plus minutes

It’s not like San Antonio is a juggernaut when he sits and he just goes through the game into easy peasy blowouts.

They’re blowing teams out, and he’s not needing to extend himself, because he’s quite frankly been that ridiculously dominant for a good chunk of the season

You can hold that against him if you want and there’s some validity to the argument.

There’s also validity to the argument that the guy that’s impacting the game on both ends at such a visceral and incredible level that he simply doesn’t NEED to play as many minutes should be rewarded for it as well

When Victor’s on the court, not only is he impacting opposing offenses in a way we’ve never seen before… On the other side, a lot of his teammates are getting to subsist on a consistent diet of wide open jump shots and uncontested layups because of how teams have to guard him night in and night out.

There’s no player in the league that teams change their game plan for, prep for, and adjust their strategy for.. on both ends like they do with him.

look at how Adam Silver has massacred my NBA…

SGA is still a huge frontrunner for MVP…

He’s disqualified because he sustained a serious injury. Not bc the games req is arbitrary.

Not because the games requirement IS ARBITRARY… because fools seem to skip over that part of the sentence

Idgaf about minutes. Stop coddling these players.

And it’s ironic you mention Wemby, bc Popovich popularized modern load management. He would always sit his star guys in ‘big’ games just to mess with the other team. Yet Duncan played 65+ games 12 straight years in his prime.

65 games is a more then reasonable amount. Players need to stop faking injuries trying to leverage rest. (Which is probably advice from trainers who are seeing their clients injured at historic rates)

The initial spirit of load management was a take a game off here and there, not a bloody mid season vacation

Am I the only one who doesn’t give a shit either way? Just give it to the player who is most valuable. I don’t really care how many games or minutes they’ve played, if you don’t play much it’ll naturally work out that you won’t get it.

I don’t buy tickets to watch one player either, I cheer for the team.

what number of minutes would make sense to replace the 65 game rule?

Shai is definitely gonna be the MVP though

Maybe Bron needs to be more productive in his minutes. Probably wouldn’t need to play as much if he put teams away early.

That’s what happens when you’re so cool that you don’t need to play 4th quarters 😎

Wait a minute, Wemby?

Another thread by a Lakers fan trying to downplay Wemby, Jokic or SGA.

What a surprise.

Yall hated Embiid so much you did this dumb shit. Get what you deserve.

Minutes are irrelevant. Games played matter. So who cares

You’re misinterpreting the intent behind the 65 game rule. The goal is to incentivize players in such a way that fans are less likely to miss out on seeing a star appear in a game that they are watching or attending. Fans, aka customers, don’t care about minutes as much as if they saw a player at all.

The 65 game limit may or may not be the best way to do that, but any incentive will appear “arbitrary” from a player’s perspective. Setting a minutes floor will also be arbitrary and not really address the issue.

An alternative, in theory, could be to expand the calendar length of the season or reduce the number of games so the incentive to sit is lower and recovery times are greater. But those will have a disproportionate impact on healthy, younger players who may not be stars but are available every night who will now either have an expanded work schedule for no extra pay or fewer games to be paid for.

Don’t care. Stop sitting out because you don’t feel like playing. Fans pay good money to see you.

I can’t remember a time when players mpg or total minutes played was a stat used to compare mvp candidates. His mpg is low because the spurs were super cautious when he was coming back from the slight calf strain mid season. Even then he’s very clearly still one of if not the most impactful players in the game. As long as you hit the game requirements and perform at an mvp level you should be a candidate.

Literally play 20 min for 80% of the games. Play less than HALF the game for 80% of the games. Like JFC, the rules are clear as day and the players VOTED on this setup in their collective bargaining agreement. You want to actually see a change, have these guys only get paid when they play, you wanna load manage or whatever, eat shit you don’t get paid or you get paid vet min for days you don’t play.

It’s crazy these guys can sit on their ass and still get full salary.

Wemby just entered #1 on the MVP ladder and the hate is already starting.

I actually think that’s a legitimate way of doing it. A player should average at least 20 minutes a game over the course of a season in order to be eligible. That would make it a minimum of 1640 minutes played in a season.

And yet for the first 2 or 3 months in the league this subreddit was glazing SGA for constantly sitting out 4th quarters. Wembys so dominant he doesn’t need to play the whole game to have as big an impact as he does, just like SGA.

Need to change it to 2000 minutes played OR 65 games.

As a fan going to a game I’d rather see Wemby for ~20 min than see Bron for 0 minutes. Last game I went to both teams sat 4+ starters.

Maybe yall shouldn’t have bitched so much and demanded a games played qualification for awards like three years ago.

People got what they demanded and are still angry. This is why it’s not really worth it to listen to your customers at a certain point.

Some of y’all are insufferable. This has nothing to do with wemby stop getting defensive and tribal. It’s a nice observation about the imperfection of the rule. But as another poster pointed out, it’s more about the league wanting players to play in every game more than about specific minutes.

It’s a nuanced convo that has nothing to actually do with Wemby. Can be a good convo if you don’t want to be small minded and argumentative.

Smh Wemby didn’t even play in the fourth quarter last game vs Memphis after his team was already up by 34 what a bum!!!

I love when chickens come home to roost.

Wemby only played low minutes because he was injured but had to meet this dumbass 65 game rule. 

The criteria is based on games not minutes, if it changes cool but fuck you

Stop whining, the rules were in place before the season started. If owners want it changed they can before next season. Simple, win it within the rules or stop complaining.

The rule is about getting players to play in more games so that fans have a chance to see them. That’s why it’s working as intended. Wemby playing 79% of games at 29 minutes per is preferable to that goal than LeBron playing 72% at 32 minutes. That extra 3 minutes per game probably doesn’t make much difference to any fans at that game, but the extra 5 games Wemby has played does.

Yes, they need to look at the minutes portion of this, but the 65 game rule was more about fans turning on the tv or showing up to games and everybody they bought the ticket to watch was load managing/maintenance scratch

There can also be an argument that playing more games at 24 minutes a game is more valuable to the league and to your team than playing 35 minutes a game in 20% less games

Laker fans will contort anything for their benefit. Now it’s a minutes thing? Grow up.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough

I see why these MVP races cause years long hate between fanbases. Some of these takes are insane and clearly aren’t being made in good faith.

The rule is fine. Going by minutes played is stupid.

Didn’t play like he deserved any rewards.

It would make sense to have two thresholds and if you clear one, you’re eligible. A.) 65 or more games played Or B.) X,XXX minutes played

If you play 64 games and log 39 minutes a game. You shouldn’t be inedible when someone who plays 66 games and logs 31 minutes a game is.

We should be talking about Jokic getting 5 straight MVPs but for some reason everyone wants to pretend he’s not in the conversation

I thought the game played thing was to avoid the “I paid 400 my ticket and my favourite player didn’t even show up” issue ?

It’s absolutely unfair to the players and some fans that it’s games over minutes played.

It absolutely makes sense from the casual fan perspective, especially in-person fans, to have your stars play less minutes in more games, for the overall health of the sport.

That’s bizarre

LeBron wasn’t going to win anything anyway

A thing it seems like many people forget is that this was collectively bargained and agreed upon by both the players and the league. It wasn’t the league unilaterally imposing the cutoff line.

My personal vote would go to Jokic this year, but I agree with Wemby saying that defense is 50% of the game and a player’s performance on that half of the court should be factored in to voting as well.

Before the load management era, there was little fear in buying tickets ahead of time and not seeing the stars play (besides injury). Back in the day, I bought the Kobe vs LeBron MLK showdown months before the game. Nowadays, I would hesitate to even buy tickets a week in advance. It’s like a lottery if the players you want to see play will play.

Ok i am not saying he should win MPV, but next time people should look at data. We know he was on min restriction like a month and did not play over 30min a game, but at the same time since january (25games = 41% of his total games) he played the most mins of the starters at 29,6min. They are just destroying opponnents in his minutes.

Check Cade’s minutes played and you’d be in for a surprise that this guy isn’t making All NBA this year. Laughable.

My brother has bought tickets specifically to see LeBron play twice this season. LeBron has missed both games despite being ostensibly healthy enough to play both times.

This isn’t really an attack on LeBron as an individual, but it’s my personal reason for supporting the 65 game cutoff. People pay and tune in to watch players play, and all else being equal, I’d rather see a guy play for 32 minutes in 5 games than see him play for 40 in 4 and then sit the entire fifth game.

the rule on games played is working yall or so butthurt whiteknighting for millionaires