Denver Nuggets celebrity Nikola Jokić is averaging 28.8 factors, 12.5 rebounds, and 10.5 assists per recreation. Victor Wembanyama is placing up 24.0 factors, 11.2 rebounds, and almost three blocks an evening whereas anchoring a San Antonio Spurs staff taking part in at a 59-win tempo.
Each entered the season as apparent award contenders. Now, each sit one dangerous week away from being ineligible for each main NBA award.
That’s the actuality of the 2025–26 season, a yr when a stat line can matter lower than a medical report. The league’s 65-game eligibility rule, launched to deal with load administration and reward regular-season participation, has quietly develop into the first variable on this yr’s awards race.
The rule’s logic was comprehensible: if you’d like credit score for a season, it’s best to play most of it. Nonetheless, the rule doesn’t ask why video games had been missed. It simply counts them. And when the mathematics begins dictating outcomes greater than efficiency, the dialog shifts.
The higher answer isn’t scrapping the rule. It’s trusting the voters.
The MVP Race and Who’s Nonetheless Standing
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads the MVP race, and never many individuals are arguing with that. He’s averaging 31.8 factors, 4.4 rebounds and 6.4 assists whereas steering Oklahoma Metropolis to a forty five–15 document and one of the best level differential within the league. He has appeared in 49 video games. He has respiratory room, although it’s not limitless.
Variety of video games these gamers can miss earlier than they’re ineligible for MVP as a result of 65-Recreation Rule:
SGA – 8 gamesJokic – 1 gameCunningham – 11 gamesWembanyama – 3 gamesLuka – 5 video games pic.twitter.com/qsJk358Fk2
— ESPN BET (@ESPNBET) February 24, 2026
Behind him, Jokić is delivering one other triple-double season whereas orchestrating all the things Denver does offensively. The manufacturing is historic. The impression is clear. However 42 appearances and 16 missed video games depart virtually no margin. Two extra absences, harm, sickness or easy dangerous timing, and he’s faraway from consideration completely. Not as a result of voters reassessed his worth. As a result of a threshold was crossed.
Cade Cunningham and Jaylen Brown have benefited from that pressure. Cunningham has reworked Detroit into the highest seed within the East whereas averaging 25.4 factors, 4.8 rebounds and 9.8 assists. Brown has carried Boston by means of a season with out Jayson Tatum, producing 29.2 factors and seven.0 rebounds whereas conserving the Celtics close to the highest of the standings. Each have performed 51 video games and sit comfortably above the road.
Luka Dončić stays within the combine in Los Angeles, producing at an elite stage when accessible. However his missed video games have shifted a part of the dialog from dominance to sturdiness.
The MVP race is now not nearly who has been greatest. It’s about who stays eligible.
Why Voter Judgment Nonetheless Issues
Availability ought to matter. Partial seasons not often deserve full-season awards. However there’s a distinction between managing relaxation and struggling a reputable harm. The present rule doesn’t account for that distinction.
Voters can.
The writers and analysts who forged ballots observe this league each evening. They perceive context. If somebody believes 42 video games is inadequate for MVP consideration, that judgment belongs on a poll. If one other believes dominance outweighs missed time, that belongs there too.
That’s how awards are imagined to work.
As a substitute, discretion has been changed by arithmetic. Traditionally, voters had been already hesitant to reward gamers who missed vital stretches. The 65-game mandate formalizes one thing that was largely self-policed, nevertheless it additionally removes flexibility in instances the place nuance issues most.
Maintaining 65 video games as a benchmark is sensible. Treating it as an immovable wall is the place the stress begins.
Draymond Inexperienced criticizing the NBA’s 65-game rule: „I as soon as misplaced a DPOY award to Kawhi Leonard and I feel he performed 51 video games.“
(Through @TheVolumeSports) pic.twitter.com/Sy2MgNYpAZ
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) January 31, 2024
When All-NBA Turns into Monetary Leverage
The implications lengthen effectively past the MVP race. All-NBA choices set off supermax escalators, which implies eligibility goes past recognition and straight impacts earnings.
Detroit’s Jalen Duren is one instance. He declined an extension and will vault into the upper max tier with an All-NBA nod. Staying above the games-played threshold might reshape his monetary trajectory by tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} over the lifetime of his subsequent contract.
Elsewhere, gamers like Kevin Durant, James Harden, LaMelo Ball, Deni Avdija and Jalen Johnson, amongst others, have positioned themselves effectively just by remaining accessible whereas different candidates hover close to the cutoff. They aren’t the one names in play, however they illustrate how the sector reshapes itself when higher-profile contenders fall beneath the road. In a more healthy season, the poll may look very completely different.
For some gamers, the distinction between 64 and 65 video games isn’t symbolic. It’s generational cash.
The Well being Dangers Beneath the Threshold
There may be one other layer to this dialog. It has much less to do with trophies than with well being.
Tyrese Haliburton addressed it straight. On JJ Redick’s podcast, The Previous Man & The Three, he admitted that the monetary incentives tied to All-NBA recognition influenced his determination to return from a hamstring harm earlier than he in any other case would have. When requested whether or not the $53 million escalator in his contract factored into that urgency, he acknowledged that it did. With out the 65-game requirement, he mentioned, he might need waited longer to be totally wholesome.
Tyrese Haliburton on the league’s new 65 recreation threshold for finish of season awards. Full YouTube phase hyperlink beneath. Full episode out tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/PUxbQtAah0
— JJ Redick (@jj_redick) February 14, 2024
Beneath the construction of his deal, an All-NBA choice would elevate his extension from roughly 25 p.c of the cap to 30 p.c, a swing of about $53 million. Reaching the edge was a part of that path. Falling brief would get rid of it.
Haliburton later referred to as the rule “a silly rule,” whereas additionally recognizing the skilled actuality that gamers really feel compelled to satisfy it if they will. His concern was clear: tying main monetary incentives to a participation quantity can push gamers towards returning earlier than they’re totally prepared.
When tens of thousands and thousands hinge on availability, the calculation modifications quick. A light pressure turns into a calendar situation. A lingering harm turns into a math downside.
The league sought to cut back load administration. What it could have completed as an alternative is introduce a unique form of danger.
A Defensive Race That Can Reset In a single day
Final season, Wembanyama was the heavy favourite for Defensive Participant of the Yr earlier than a deep vein thrombosis prognosis ended his marketing campaign. The eligibility threshold provided little flexibility, and a race that had a runaway chief in February abruptly grew to become huge open.
It wasn’t only a trophy he misplaced. Falling in need of eligibility additionally eliminated one pathway towards Rose Rule standards, which may considerably improve the worth of a rookie max extension. A blood clot value him an award and, probably, a major chunk of his subsequent contract.
Now he’s again and as soon as once more essentially the most disruptive defensive drive within the league. He has performed 44 video games. He’s one prolonged absence away from final yr occurring once more — not as a result of he did something improper, not as a result of he selected to take a seat, however as a result of that’s how the rule works. Wembanyama is aware of that higher than anybody.
The Price of Turning Awards Into Arithmetic
The 65-game threshold grew out of reputable frustration. Followers paid premium costs solely to see stars sit. Nationwide broadcasts misplaced a few of their shine. Load administration grew to become shorthand for disengagement. The league had a legitimate concern.
However holding gamers accountable for relaxation shouldn’t imply punishing them for getting damage. Jokić didn’t select a hyperextended knee. Wembanyama didn’t select a medical prognosis.
Voters perceive that distinction. Allow them to use it.
