With the NBA regular season racing to its conclusion on Sunday, much of the talk is around the 65-game rule and which players will be ineligible for awards like All-NBA and MVP. We already know that stars like Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, and Luka Doncic are going to fall short of the mark, and now the Nuggets have a difficult choice to make with Nikola Jokic needing to play on the final day of the season to hit the threshold.
Perhaps there are some issues with the rule, and some of them are being exposed this season, but at the same time, perhaps we are focusing on the wrong things. 65 out of 82 games is not even 80% of the season, which seems like a pretty reasonable amount of games to play for one to be considered “Most Valuable” player, or any of these other awards.
People act like this is some failing by the NBA, but the logic is completely backwards. The league wants to insist on playing this 82-game gauntlet of a schedule while clinging to the notion that the regular season matters. Yet, this discourse does nothing but suggest the opposite.
JB cruised past the 65-game rule
Jaylen Brown has played in 71 games this season, at over 34 minutes per game, with many of his games missed coming in the last few weeks, with most of the heavy lifting completed. He has been remarkably durable and reliable all season long, leading his team from the front and being as available as you’d want from your superstar.
Still, people want to act like JB is only going to make first-team All-NBA and finish top-5 in MVP because of his durability, as if that’s a knock on him. Instead, this should be rewarded, that despite all the Celtics’ offseason losses and the injury to Jayson Tatum, when they needed JB the most, he was there and came through time and again.
That should be celebrated. Even with a bigger burden, he rose to the challenge and shouldered a massive burden, playing a pivotal role in carrying the Celtics to an extremely improbable 2-seed in the Eastern Conference that nobody saw coming.
Players who failed to reach 65 games are not victims
Playing in games is important! It should be celebrated, and he should be lauded for it. Instead of complaining about a rule that’s not at all unfair, maybe we should be wondering why so many other stars can’t handle the stresses of participating in 80% of their games?
This wouldn’t even be a conversation in any other sport. We don’t measure home runs or touchdowns per game. An NFL player wouldn’t play in just 13 games and draw MVP consideration. An MLB player wouldn’t play in 125 games and draw MVP consideration. Why do we do this for the NBA, and act like players who can’t play are somehow the victims?
Is Jaylen Brown one of the five best players in the league? No. But is there not value in going out and playing 35 minutes a night for your team? Yes. And that’s why he deserves to be first-team All-NBA, and to finish as one of the five most valuable players this season, regardless of a rule that has become immensely unpopular recently.