TORONTO — I’m sorry to do this, but we’re starting with math, and we’re starting with statistics.
This season, Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver’s Nikola Jokić are the runaway leaders in win shares, an imperfect stat that gets at the production a player provides. Heading into Tuesday’s games, Gilgeous-Alexander, who missed his 10th game of the year, had amassed 11.4 win shares, or 0.336 win shares per 48 minutes. Jokić, who has missed 16 games, has 10.5 win shares, or 0.349 per 48 minutes.
Right now, they qualify for MVP and All-NBA conversation. If they miss eight and two more games, respectively, this year and fall below the league’s 65-game threshold, they would no longer be eligible for consideration. In my colleague Tim Bontemps’ most recent MVP “straw poll” at ESPN, Cade Cunningham (6.7 win shares, 0.183 per 48), Victor Wembanyama (6.1, 0.234) — who can only miss four more games while still qualifying — and Luka Dončić (6.2, 0.189) are third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the race.
Let’s assume Wembanyama ended up winning because the Thunder and Nuggets stars didn’t qualify: So far this season, he has needed three games to produce as many win shares as the Thunder and Nuggets stars produce in two games. Win shares has its flaws, but most overall-impact awards suggest that Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokić have been the two players who have contributed most to winning this season.
So, what are we doing with the 65-game rule? The league instituted it before the 2023-24 season to give players an incentive to play more often than not, fighting against the perception that the league’s stars weren’t playing as much as they could. And yet, the likes of Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić, Wembanyama, Dončić (12 missed games), Kawhi Leonard (13) and Devin Booker (14) are flirting with missing the cutoff. Steph Curry (18 missed games) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (25) are already disqualified.
If the rule has encouraged players to get on the floor more, it hasn’t made a profound difference. And now, it feels as if the real impact might be to make sure the wrong people get some awards.
It is time to scrap the rule.
One of the main reasons: This is a rule that puts the onus on players to push to play. Players, generally, want to play.
“He doesn’t want to miss games,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Tuesday night about Gilgeous-Alexander, making his only appearance in Toronto, about 45 minutes from his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. “He doesn’t want to miss this game, I’ll tell you that.”
An injured Shai Gilgeous-Alexander watches his Oklahoma City Thunder team play against the Brooklyn Nets on Feb. 20. (Alonzo Adams / Imagn Images)
He is out with an abdominal strain. He would have missed more games if the injury had not bridged the All-Star break. As it is, the Thunder said he will be re-evaluated at the end of the week, likely causing him to miss at least one more game.
Jokić missed his 16 games because of a knee injury. One legitimate injury, and the two best players in the league, who play for genuine championship contenders, are on the precipice of not being eligible for awards. Maybe the NBA didn’t prepare for two players to be so much more valuable than the rest of the league, except that the NBA has long been defined by the outsized impact of star players. Get the wrong injuries, and the awards become a joke, a wild misrepresentation of the season that happened.
Let’s zoom in on Defensive Player of the Year. Wembanyama is clearly the most impactful defensive player in the league. Watch how he impacted the Spurs’ win over the Detroit Pistons on Monday, or take a look at the stats: San Antonio’s defense is much better with Wembanyama on the floor instead of him off it, 1.7 points per 100 possessions stingier than the Thunder’s league-best defense. They all say the same thing.
Also, Wembanyama is 7-foot-4 and has a history of injuries. The Spurs and Thunder are well clear of the rest of the Western Conference. Instead of being able to rest him liberally, protect his health and maximize their chances in the playoffs, which the league’s incentive structure says is the most important time of the season, the Spurs have to consider getting Wembanyama to 65 games. That, of course, is the point from the league’s perspective, but it ignores the league’s culpability in all of it.
The easiest suggestion here is to cut down on the number of games in the regular season, therefore giving players more time to rest in between games while also making each game more important. But there is no indication the league’s stakeholders — owners, players, television partners and so forth — have the stomach for that. To the degree that teams are being extra cautious with their stars, holding them out for an additional game or two, the answer isn’t to threaten the athletes for not playing, but to reward the teams for getting their best players on the court. That means making the regular season more important.
At the top of the standings, the league could increase the rewards for the best teams, giving them more of a home-court advantage or the ability to choose their opponents in the playoffs. Introduce a bye system. Whatever you do, make the games count for the teams.
At the other end of the standings, the league needs to find ways to reward teams for winning 35 games as opposed to 18 through improved lottery odds. Making another All-NBA team might or might not matter to Pascal Siakam; having better lottery odds definitely matters to the Indiana Pacers, giving them reason to play him down the stretch. Just as in the tanking conversation, if you incentivize teams to try to win, they will try to do so, which will mean getting their stars on the floor when they’re healthy enough.
As it is, the NBA is playing with fire. Imagine a scenario in which an MVP candidate has missed 17 games and is battling a minor injury, but tries to play through it in an otherwise-meaningless game. Now, imagine that player gets seriously hurt in one of those games.
With advanced stats more prevalent than ever and the ability to watch almost any game, media voters for these awards have more resources than ever to assess player value and production. We can quibble with the merit of 65 games versus 60 or 55, or coming up with a minimum-minutes threshold instead of a minimum-games threshold. We will bump up against the same issues regardless.
For the sake of debate, let’s pretend Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić and Wembanyama don’t get to 65 games this year. We could end up with award results like the following.
- MVP: Cade Cunningham
- Defensive Player of the Year: Rudy Gobert
- First Team All-NBA: Cunningham, Dončić, Jaylen Brown, Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards
Would that be representative of the season we’re seeing?
Awards are kind of silly. So long as we have them, though, they might as well reflect what happens in a season.