Give Victor Wembanyama credit for this much: The young man has a knack for timing — on the court and off.
Just when it seemed as if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was about to secure his second consecutive MVP honor, with the Oklahoma City Thunder atop the standings and the incumbent as dominant as ever, the San Antonio Spurs big man has gone to great lengths to convince voters otherwise. He and I had a brief exchange about the topic on March 17 in Sacramento, when he shared the unsurprising fact that he would, in fact, vote for himself if he had that ability. As I wrote that night, his case was already much stronger than most observers seemed to have noticed. But the discussion escalated from there, with Wembanyama going into full marketing mode with our Jared Weiss after Monday night’s win in Miami.
Regardless of what you think of Wembanyama’s style on the campaign trail, it’s tough to argue with the logic he has laid out. He’s right that defense continues to be undervalued in the NBA, and the numbers show that his individual impact on that front is unmatched around the league. Not to mention the eye test. That part of his argument sparked quite the postgame reaction on Wednesday from the Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green, a former Defensive Player of the Year who has been selected to nine All-Defensive teams. In short, as Green explained, it shouldn’t take Wembanyama highlighting the obvious value of defense for people to truly pay attention to that pivotal factor. This is an often-overlooked subject that Green and I discussed at length back in early November.
What’s more, Wembanyama is right that his case on the other end of the floor requires a second look, too. The gravity he causes on pick-and-rolls has everything to do with San Antonio’s elite offensive rating (fourth in the league). He’s also right about the head-to-head matchups being worth remembering with the Spurs proving to be the Thunder’s kryptonite far more than any other team, winning four of five meetings, including the NBA Cup semifinal.
But if Wembanyama is actually going to win MVP, not only catching up with SGA but beating out the likes of the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić and the Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Dončić, then San Antonio needs to pass OKC in the standings and secure the league’s best record. That’s the only foolproof way to force voters who might have already made up their minds to reassess.
The notion of a team that didn’t make the playoffs last season finishing with the league’s best record would demand a double take. There was just one problem with that plan, though: OKC simply wouldn’t lose.
Yet after winning 12 straight — and 17 of 19 — the Thunder fell at the Boston Celtics on Wednesday night (119-109) while the Spurs downed the Memphis Grizzlies (123-98). The gap between the two teams is down to two games, with nine games to go for each and the tiebreaker in San Antonio’s favor by way of those head-to-head matchups. Through his play and his politicking, Wembanyama has sparked quite the MVP debate down the stretch.
Giannis vs. the Bucks
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, this is what happens when a team’s agenda suddenly diverts from that of its franchise centerpiece.
Never mind that Giannis Antetokounmpo has a long and legendary reputation of playing through pain, or that the Bucks never seemed to take issue with that quality when it gave them a chance to win a championship. The team’s current stance — that he won’t be medically cleared to play despite the strong indications that he believes he’s good to go — is the clearest sign yet that these two parties are headed for a divorce in the summer. And whether the Bucks are trying to preserve his health for an eventual trade, improve their draft position, or both, the fact that this approach is directly at odds with Antetokounmpo’s desires speaks volumes about the state of affairs in this relationship.
There’s always a never-say-never component to star player decisions, but the notion of Antetokounmpo still being in a Bucks jersey when he’s eligible to sign a four-year, $270 million extension on Oct. 1 seems even more unlikely by the day. As our Eric Nehm first reported on March 19, the lottery-bound Bucks approached Antetokounmpo about the prospect of sitting out for the rest of the season after he suffered a left knee hyperextension on March 15.
Ironically, that’s the same injury he played through in the 2022 playoffs, which ended with the Bucks downing the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals to win the franchise’s first title in 50 years. Yet this time around, when the one-time champion, finals MVP and two-time MVP informed team officials that he had no desire to sit, it’s quite clear that he wasn’t met with the same sort of appreciation.
Nine days later, the National Basketball Players Association made a statement accusing the NBA of not holding the Bucks accountable in relation to the league’s player participation policy. This sort of tactic is extremely rare for the players’ union, and certainly reflects a doubling down of sorts on Antetokounmpo’s part. Yet, nothing has changed.
Giannis Antetokounmpo wants to play again this season if he’s healthy enough. The team disagrees. (Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)
The Bucks have ruled him out of four consecutive games since Nehm’s initial report, with Milwaukee’s next game coming at home against San Antonio on Saturday. Coach Doc Rivers reiterated the organization’s stance on Wednesday, indicating that Antetokounmpo is “just not healthy.” NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed the issue at his news conference following the league’s Board of Governors meetings on Wednesday.
“Prior to that press release from the Players Association, we were not aware there was an issue,” Silver said. “We knew Giannis was injured. He was within the sort of usual period it was taking to come back from that injury. I was a bit surprised by that press release.
“(But) yes, when our Players Association, our union, announces they see an issue, of course we’ll look into it. So that’s where it currently stands.”
As Silver shared, he had not yet heard directly from Antetokounmpo on the matter. One would think a superstar wouldn’t have to make that sort of call just to get back on the court, but perhaps these desperate times call for desperate measures. Or, more likely, maybe the Bucks and Antetokounmpo will just bicker until the bitter end before finally parting ways.
The 65-game rule debate rages on
First, a confession: I was wrong about the 65-game rule. Maybe.
As Silver rightly pointed out in his news conference, the frustration with load management was so widespread a few years ago that this extreme measure seemed entirely necessary (it was first implemented for the 2023-24 season). But then I watched reigning MVP Joel Embiid make the unwise decision to push through a knee issue and play at Golden State on Jan. 30 of that initial season, when the Philadelphia 76ers star reinjured the knee amid widespread criticism about his inability to stay on the court and wound up missing the next two months. That feeling of artificial pressure being applied by the system, and a player making a choice about his body based on the desire to qualify for awards, seemed problematic then and has only proven more so now.
Something had to be done. But perhaps this wasn’t it.
When the league and the NBPA agreed to make the 65-game rule part of the current collective bargaining agreement, they might not have envisioned a scenario like this year, in which so many of the best performers are in danger of being disqualified despite having such memorable seasons. On Tuesday, the NBPA issued a statement in support of the Detroit Pistons’ Cade Cunningham, calling for the abolition or reform of the rule. There is a long list of elite players who are on the edge here.
Yet even if the vast majority of them make the required mark, there’s a domino effect that is worth analyzing. Is the goal to maximize the moments for the league’s best players during the regular season, or should the impact on each player’s ability to perform at peak level in the playoffs also be factored into the equation?
Take Anthony Edwards, for example. The Minnesota Timberwolves star has been out since March 15 with right knee inflammation, but he needs to play in seven of the team’s final nine games to qualify for All-NBA. The Wolves announced on March 17 that he would be re-evaluated in one to two weeks.
Considering the season Edwards has had, averaging 29.5 points (third in the league), 5.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists in the 58 games he has played, most objective observers would agree that he deserves to be granted his third All-NBA selection. But if Edwards comes back earlier than he should to qualify, with an injury that could very well return if it’s not properly handled, then Minnesota runs the risk of compromising its bigger-picture goals for the sake of this 65-game rule silliness.
Yet to hear Silver tell it on Wednesday, there’s nothing to see here.
“I think it is working,” he said when asked about the NBPA’s pushback on the rule. “I think if you look at the numbers, the pre-implementation of this rule, numbers (regarding player participation) were going in the wrong direction. I may have this a little bit off, (but) I think the three years before we adopted this rule almost a third of the All-NBA players had not played 80 percent of the games. That was a huge issue for the league. In the same way we’re addressing tanking now, people said, what are you going to do about that?
“So not surprisingly, (the) same underlying (theme) around tanking goes to player participation. Are the incentives aligned? There was a general agreement between us and the players’ association that we needed to do something about that. The result was to have this 65-game rule. Could it be 68? Could it be 62? That was the product of a negotiation. I generally think it’s worked. (With) that, along with the player participation policy, there is not nearly as much discussion about load management as there was, in part because the teams and players have responded. You see them on the floor now.”
You really don’t, though. In truth, you see players like Gilgeous-Alexander (60 games played), Wembanyama (57), Jokić (57), Dončić (60) and so many others coming oh-so close to being left out of the historical conversation as it relates to this season. Voters are smart enough to figure out who deserves what on our own. The league, and the NBPA, might need to find a new way to address the load management issue in the future.