I don’t think other sports try to micromanage awards voting the way the NBA chose to. 

NBA has been an outlier on angering league partners by sitting healthy stars and strategically lying about injuries and delaying game day rosters to the last hour so as a result they are an outlier on all the consequences. The NFL doesn’t have these issues so don’t have these corrections for example.

I’m glad this is where we are. Buying tickets to NBA games only for stars to take a mental day stinks. Maybe you like it but I hate it. Clearing the schedule to catch a game on TV just to see stars in street clothes is GREAT!

It’s cuz the awards being tied to contracts. That needs to go

I think the thing I really notice about the debates, is that NHL, MLB and NFL focus primarily on raw counting stats, so winning MVP while playing less than 80% of the games is quite rare. The NBA focus historically has been on per game averages. The exceptions for this are goalies in the NHL, and pitchers in Baseball. It’s very rare to win MVP in the NFL if you only played 13 or 14 games. I think the only NHLer non-goalie to win in the past 30 years playing less than 65 games was Mario (with insane counting stats). Since 1990 the fewest games played in a full season in the MLB as a position player to win MVP is Bonds I believe at 130 (Bagwell and Thomas won with less due to the 1994 lockout).

The players did this to themselves. No other league has as much of an adversarial position as players in the NBA vs fans.

They’re doing too much now. I would love to see Luka qualify for awards but there’s rules and requirements for a reason. Allowing him to circumvent it on technicalities just puts a stain on it and at that point they may as well get rid of the 65 game requirement.

No other sport has to bully their stars to play. Which is 100% what this rule is.

Other sports also don’t have huge load management problems.

Mahomes isn’t taking the dolphins game off just for the hell of it

Most sports the players aren’t soft AF and miss half the season.

Nope.

Nope, because in most sports people want to play every single game. They don’t have a “load management issue” like the NBA does.

Ant gonna be playing 35 games a season and still make all NBA teams if this precedent gets set

Other sports don’t have the issue the nba has.

Its the only sport that judges players numbers by averages.

No because their players actually care about playing

It’s wild that a league that’s been around for decades is still figuring shit out.

Blame Kyrie Irving with his dumbass antics

It’s all so weird, idk how we got to this point and mindset but best I got is Popovich resting old dudes in marquee matchups to troll the media has had terrible repercussions

Yes, the NFL player awards are just as contentious every year. And while they don’t have any official rule about how many games you have to play to be eligible missing games does count against you when voting happens.

You think it’s insane but the NBA is living for all this drama and headlines it’s literally their entire business model

This is all so moronic. I hate Adam Silver.

Get rid of this stupid rule.

It’s embarrassing

I came to comment this, this is a laughably stupid situation the NBA has put themselves in

Instead of outright creating these cutoffs that are affected easily deserving players, just emphasize the importance of availability in criteria for these awards (as if they weren’t already put in place)

People were up in arms that players today are soft and dont play every game like they used to. Then theres a system in place that incentives players to get them to do it or else. Now people are up in arms saying the rules are too mean :(

The closest I can think of is MLB’s “qualified player” rules for rate stats. For hitting stats (e.g. batting average), a player must average 3.1 plate appearances per game on the team’s schedule. That means coming to bat 502 times per year. Unlike in the NBA, a player isn’t disqualified from winning if they fall short of the minimum. Rather the player’s stat is adjusted to account for their decreased playing time.

Example: A player gets 150 hits and 0 walks over the course of 450 plate appearances. That means their batting average is 150 divided by 450, which equals .333. To adjust their batting average to a qualified amount, you change the denominator from 450 to 502, giving the same player an adjusted batting average of .299. A batting average of .333 could be enough to win a batting title nowadays, but a .299 adjusted batting average would probably fall a bit short.

Other sports award season leaders to cumulative stats, not per-game stats. It’s not the whole story, but it makes availability much more obvious.

No other sports has an insanely stupid rule like this.

So no

Other sports measure raw totals. Nobody really cares about a yards per game leader.

The players, and by extension the organizations, were pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable and the backlash from the fans and media wasn’t just noise, it actually did in fact impact league revenue. The NBA has a lower projected cap for the 2026-27 season because they weren’t meeting projected viewership trends, and part of that is because people aren’t going to tune into games when the stars aren’t playing. The growth overall is only projected to be 7%, when there is a maximum of 10% that they were all hoping to hit with the new CBA and media deal. 

Is it stupid that the players contracts are tied to awards voted on by media members that don’t watch games? Absolutely. But is it the players own fault that their contracts are tied that way? Yes, they voted for it. Is it also the players own fault that the league is not hitting its revenue benchmarks because they aren’t playing? Also yes. 

You would never see this shit in the NFL. 

“No one forced you to get anyone pregnant” DENIED

Even in America he would miss time because Luka got there a few days before.

but then does the optics of that look bad if they are making iffy exceptions for a Laker, but not Cade or Edwards?

Yeah fair, but I guess if you’re in the same country/city, it’s easier to get back faster. Though again, if you’re on a road trip, it might again be impossible to not miss anything. But in his case, it is basically impossible not to miss at least one game. I personally think that players should be allowed to take at least 1-2 games off for such an event, but it’s hard to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed to miss any games at all.

I think KD also missed 3 games with a childbirth this season 

Yeah well if he really cared about basketball he would have played those games. Basketball just isn’t in his heart, that’s why he’ll never be LeBron or Kobe. /s

Wemby also missed a few games going home for his grandmothers funeral

Incremental is the best fix we have. Minutes just means guys play 45+ the last week and get hurt.

Yeah, this seems better. I think maybe 65 for MVP/DPOY/MIP/Rookie of the year, 60 for First team All-Nba/defense/rookie, 55 for second, 50 for 3rd. Though obviously if you only play 52 games, you are going to be behind someone who played 82. Unless for example you are comparing someone like Giannis and Deni Avdija, where you could reasonably argue you would still rather have 50 game of Giannis instead

I don’t understand why it can’t just be “play 90% of the games you’re medically cleared to play” or something.

Silver has the league making money hand over fist. He needs to stay. His bosses think he needs to stay

David Stern wouldn’t have. It was very well known who Sterling was.

This was also a very popular decision at the time, even on this subreddit. The only reason people are freaking out now is because some of the subreddit sweethearts might get impacted negatively (one of which who’s Stan’s were the ones screaming the loudest for this to be a thing, to only reverse course on it this season)

Ewing finished top 5 in MVP two years in a row and didn’t even make All-NBA either year. Where was David Stern?

Silver didn’t even “get rid” of him. You can’t force an NBA owner to divest in a team, you can only ban them from going to games.

The only reason Donald Sterling lost ownership of the Clippers was because his ex wife got a judge to deem him mentally unfit to run the team. He made hundreds of millions of dollars selling the team to Ballmer.

Dude effectively got put on paid leave like a shitty cop aka rewarded for being racist trash. Actually wow what a parallel

injuries are part of the game.

having children is a choice. just ask KD.

They have an actual injury clause already. If you get a season ending injury having played at least 62 games and 85% of the season, you can still qualify. Unfortunately, Luka played 84% of the previous games before his injury. He’s literally 1 game and 1% off, I think they will probably rule in his favor being so close

The exception is in the original rules in case of exceptional circumstances. They wouldn’t be changing anything, they would simply invoke what is already there

Any all nba first team level player would get this. Be real man you know it’s true

And if you lose that game and become the 4 seed?

That’s not the only award

It’s less about mvp and more about all-nba and the scoring title

I hate all of this. Get rid of the 65 game requirement. But if you’re going to make exceptions, make it for everyone.

Many people were happy with the 65 game rule btw when it first came out.