As the NBA season comes to an end, another wild yet entertaining season with many storylines carries the weight throughout the season. Perhaps the most controversial topic is the 65 game eligibility rule introduced before the 2023-2024 season.
This rule requires players to play 65 of their team’s 82 games, or 63 games with 20+ minutes, to qualify for the following awards: MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, All-NBA teams, All-Defensive teams, and Most Improved Player. Before this rule was enacted, there was a growing problem around the NBA that fans felt ruined the product of what they once loved. That problem is called load management. According to Physipedia (a world leading physiotherapy and rehab professional website), the definition of load management is “the deliberate temporary reduction of external physiological stressors intended to facilitate global improvements in athlete wellness and performance while preserving musculoskeletal and metabolic health.” Because of fast play, quick and twitchy cuts and movements, 82 NBA games can be brutal on the ankles and knees. This strategy of resting the stars has been beneficial for the players and teams in deeper playoff runs, but not as much of a benefit towards the game the fans want to see. In an article published 11/19/19, right as the 2019-2020 season started, writers Kevin Pelton and Kevin Arnovitz of Espn.com wrote about that issue. In the article titled, “NBA load management: What we know and don’t know,” Peloton and Arnovitz discuss many factors regarding the pros and cons of why load management became a thing and a problem in the first place.
First, on the issue of why load management was needed to begin with, the article states, “Those who work in the (sports science) field are confident that incurring loads that stretch an athlete beyond his capacity — everyone’s capacity is different — greatly increases injury risk. It is rare to find a sports scientist or performance specialist who believes that the NBA season doesn’t require some attention to load management to assure that a player has a chance to be at peak performance in the postseason.” Besides this, there were also reasons why fans didn’t like this. For example, going into the 2019-2020 season, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George both paired up on the Los Angeles Clippers, creating undoubtedly one of the most exciting 2-way, dominant, top 10 player duos in the NBA, competing with LeBron and his newly acquired sidekick, Los Angeles Laker Antony Davis. Because of the marketability of these two superstars for the Clippers, the NBA put (as they should) a bigger amount of their games than other teams on national television (ESPN, TNT, ABC, etc). You can probably see where this is going, but fans grew ever more frustrated with the load management process as they would turn to watch the star players duel in and out on national television, and one of them is in street clothes. Especially guys like Kawhi and Paul George, who were known for participating in this practice more than other players. This problem also applies to fans who pay to actually go to the game in person, pay their hard earned dollars to see maybe the only game they will go to all year, just for their favourite player to be sitting out. As Kobe Bryant once said, “What about the fans that saved up to watch me play just once?”
This leads to another stance that fans and media have expressed their viewpoints on. Not only are players sitting out more, but they are also weaker than ever before, not being able to push through pain as they did back in the day. They didn’t need a minimum game requirement for awards; they were tough, physical. Lots of ex-players think their era of basketball was tougher on the body. Those players do have a point. Before the boom of popularity for the NBA in the mid 1980s (thanks to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson), players did not make as much money. Because of this, they had to do things that sound crazy today, such as fly commercials, work jobs in the offseason, and had a lack of advanced medical treatments and studies out there for them at the time due to the lack of tech. To add to this point, superstar and hall of fame players back then, such as John Stockton and Karl Malone, the dynamic duo that led the Utah Jazz to two finals appearances, played over 15 years together. Stockton, in his own right, missed only 22 out of 1,526 possible games he was a part of over his 19 year career. Malone, on the other hand, missed only 76 of the possible 1,552 games he was a part of. These two are just a fraction of the guys who gutted out what is looked back on as a hard era to play in. But maybe there is something deeper than today’s players just being weak for the reason they needed to implement this 65 game rule.
Despite these fair criticisms, there are definitely reasons why it is unfair to criticise players today. In a YouTube video published on 4/7/26 by Thinking Basketball. Creator Ben Taylor argues why the 65 game rule may be a mistake and that load management wasn’t the problem in the first place. In the video titled, “When the solution doesn’t address the problem.” Taylor and his team analysed footage from different eras. For each era, they picked 2-3 players based on different play styles (ex. Big man, movement shooter, dominant ball handler) and watched footage of each from a game. and they tracked two key things: how many steps did the player take? How many hard plants/change of direction or deceleration did they have? The results were as follows: Reggie Miller, the movement shooter from the 80-90’s area they picked, had similar steps to 60’s guard Jerry West, but doubled the amount of hard plants. In the modern player study, however. The big man they chose, Anthony Davis, who is known for being “injury prone.” Didn’t have a significant amount of steps, but had nearly as many hard plants as 6 ‘6 movement shooter Regigie Miller from the 90s player study. Davis, mind you, is 7’0 feet, 250+ pounds. As I said earlier, not only are playstyles and the pace of the game not beneficial on an average player’s ankles, but now that big men are more mobile and athletic than ever, it puts even more stress on the body. Despite this, there are counterarguments to this. For example, Mikal Bridges, a stifling 2-way forward for the New York Knicks, has not missed a game of basketball since he was dating back to high school. He played every possible game of his 3 years at Villanova and every single possible game so far in his 8 year NBA career. That may raise the question, can everyone else do it, or is he an anomaly? One last stat I’d like to point out, since the 1967-68 NBA season, only 1 player in league history has been an MVP playing less than 65 games in a full 82 game season (taking away lockout seasons and covid). That MVP is Bill Walton, the dominant and skilled big man whose prime was cut short due to injuries, but in his 1977-78 MVP campaign, the big man only played in 58-82 games.
As much as the league wants to give the fans their money’s worth, it seems that commissioner Silver seems to lack total interest in the players that he works for benefit. At season’s end, already multiple NBA stars are going to miss out on awards and incentives due to the 65 game minimum, whether it’s by 1, or 30. It seems as though as the game evolves, the human body will not be able to produce as much as it may once have in this sport, and it’s time for the commissioner to come to that reasoning.
The following list includes NBA Stars who will miss out on award season this year due to not meeting the 65 game requirement:
Luka Doncic – 64 games (now eligible after appeal to league)
Cade Cunningham – 64 games (now eligible after appeal to league)
Devin Booker – 64 games
Anthony Edwards – 61 games (Denied eligibility after appeal to league)
Stephen Curry – 42 games
Jalen Williams – 33 games
Giannis Antetokounmpo – 36 games