Conversation around the NBA’s 65-game rule for awards eligibility has been heating up all season, and it seems to have truly reached a boiling point with Cade Cunningham’s collapsed lung.
The list of players who are no longer eligible to win awards or make an All-NBA team is growing longer by the day, and that’s not even counting all of the players who are squarely on the bubble and will need to gut out most of these games leading up to the regular season finish line just to reach the threshold.
An analytics insider for Yahoo! Sports, Tom Haberstroh, put together a tongue-in-cheek article on why the 65-game rule should be eliminated, and in the article, which was published on Friday, he pointed out that at the time of his writing, with just over three weeks left in the season, there were only 32 players who had officially checked the boxes for eligibility by playing in 65+ games for at least 20 minutes.
Based on that list, Haberstroh put together his All-NBA teams, which featured two Celtics: Derrick White on the first team and Payton Pritchard on the third team.
By my count, there are 32 players currently eligible for MVP, All-NBA, DPOY, All-Defense and MIP awards.
— Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) March 20, 2026
Here's what my All-NBA team would look like: pic.twitter.com/aTr0qhUEkF
Celtics’ best players have been extremely reliable
Obviously, these All-NBA teams were a joke, and many more players will officially hit the mark in the coming days and weeks, but it’s illustrative of how much availability, and lack thereof, plays a role in today’s NBA.
It also helps point out why the Celtics have been so successful this season. For all the talk about the players they lost in the offseason, and their best player, Jayson Tatum, missing the first five months of the season, the core players who have been here since day one have been about as rock-solid as can be.
Boston has played 71 games so far this season, and they’ve had Pritchard for 69, D-White for 68, and Jaylen Brown for 64 (who should hit the threshold on Wednesday night and become a virtual lock for an actual All-NBA team).
Boston’s durability and continuity have fueled success
But it goes deeper than just those three key, core players. The Celtics have also gotten Sam Hauser for 68 games, Neemias Queta for 66 games, Baylor Scheierman and Hugo Gonzalez have each played in 66 games, and Luka Garza has played in 61.
Anfernee Simons was also active for 49 games before getting traded, so for almost the entire season, the Celtics have had their entire rotation available. The only real issue has been the finger fracture suffered by Nikola Vucevic earlier this month, but he should be back soon.
So, Haberstroh’s point about the rule may be a good one, but the way he attempted to mock the rule also acts as a way to point out Boston’s elite durability and how the reliable availability and consistency have helped fuel their surprising success this season. Making fun of the rule and wanting it changed is fine, but the players who are going to meet the threshold, including many Celtics, should be praised and rewarded.