The NBA’s 65-Game Rule Is a Disaster — Kill It Now While We Can!

By: Dylan Meyer

Over the past decade, the NBA has had a real problem on its hands. Star players were getting special treatment, sitting out games left and right while fans paid good money to watch them play. You’re telling me I bought a ticket to watch LeBron James and now I’m stuck watching Rui Hachimura instead? No disrespect to Rui, but fans want to see the GREATS. That’s what they paid for. That’s what “load management” stole from them.

So in 2023, the league and the NBPA cooked up a solution: tie award eligibility to a 65-game minimum. Play in fewer than 65 games? No MVP. No All-NBA. Congratulations – you’ve just been awarded a First Team All-Nothing.

Simple. Clean. Logical. Right?

Wrong. Because here’s the catch nobody thought through – what about the star player who shows up every single night, plays his heart out, and then gets a collapsed lung in game 61? What happens to him? Well, apparently, he gets punished just like the guy who chose to sit on the bench in his goofy Balenciaga dress. That’s not a rule. That’s a disaster. And it’s time to kill it.

It Punishes Players Who Get Hurt

The fundamental problem with the 65-game rule is simple: it was designed to stop players from choosing to sit out. However you know what a player can’t choose? A collapsed lung. A late-season blood clot. You can’t load manage your way out of those.

Look no further than Cade Cunningham. The man is averaging ~25 points, ~10 assists, and ~6 rebounds a night while leading the Detroit Pistons to the No. 1 seed in the East. He was making a legitimate case for his first All-NBA selection, maybe even an MVP conversation. Then in game 61, BOOM, a collapsed lung. Done. And just like that, one of the best individual seasons in the NBA this year might go completely unrecognized. Cavs guard Donovan Mitchell said it best:

“It’s not like guys are resting and missing these games. These are legitimate injuries. There’s no way

certain guys should be in this scenario.”

D-Mitch is absolutely right. The rule was created to target load management. Instead, it’s targeting players who got hurt doing their jobs. That’s not what anybody signed up for.

It’s Creating the Exact Problem It Was Supposed to Solve

Here’s where this rule gets truly ugly. Instead of keeping players on the court and healthy, it’s now doing the exact opposite, pressuring injured players to rush back before their bodies are ready, all because they’re terrified of missing out on awards and the massive contracts tied to them.

Tyrese Haliburton is the perfect example. In 2023-24, Haliburton was having the best season of his career, putting up career highs across the board, a genuine All-NBA candidate. Then he hurt his hamstring. Instead of taking the time to heal properly, he rushed back to protect his award eligibility and the $53 million contract bonus attached to it. He was able to meet the 65 game minimum, but he was never the same player after returning. His efficiency dropped. His stats dipped. He was clearly playing through something he shouldn’t have been. Haliburton later admitted he probably would have handled his recovery differently if the rule didn’t exist.

The NBA built a rule to protect the product. Instead, it’s slowly killing it – pressuring the league’s best players to play hurt, risk re-injury, and potentially shortening their careers just to hit an arbitrary number. That’s not a solution. That’s malpractice.

It’s Rewriting History in the Worst Way

Let’s talk about one of the GOATS, LeBron James. Twenty-one consecutive seasons making an All-NBA team. Twenty-one years of sustained, historic excellence – a streak that transcends individual awards and speaks to one of the greatest careers sports has ever seen. That streak ends this season. Not because LeBron fell off. Not because voters decided someone else deserved it more. Because he missed too many games due to injury and crossed an arbitrary line in the rule book. That’s how one of the greatest streaks in All-NBA history ends. Not with a bang. With a stupid rule.

And it’s not just LeBron. Right now, 14 of the 15 players from last year’s All-NBA teams are either already disqualified or on the bubble of missing out on awards this season. The best players in the league – Ant, Giannis, Curry, Jokic, Wembanyama, do I keep on going? All are being put at risk. So what happens if they don’t make it? We’re suddenly handing out All-NBA honors to Payton Pritchard. Again, no diss to Payton Pritchard, but he is not an All-NBA player, and everybody knows it. The integrity of these awards isn’t being protected. It’s being destroyed.

The Voters Already Did This Job

Here’s what makes this rule the most infuriating: it was never necessary in the first place. Media voters have always factored games played into their decisions, naturally, without being told to. In the entire history of the NBA, only one MVP winner has ever played less than 79% of his team’s games in a full 82-game season. One. That was Bill Walton in 1978, and his numbers absolutely backed it up. Voters don’t need a rule to tell them not to give MVP to a guy who played 40 games. They’re already doing that job. The 65-game rule isn’t fixing a real problem. It’s fixing a problem that didn’t exist.

Let’s Cut the Crap — Here’s What Actually Needs to Happen

The NBA saw load management becoming a PR nightmare. Instead of attacking the actual root cause, they slapped a Band-Aid on a broken bone, no pun intended, and called it a policy. Now Cade Cunningham is sitting at home with a collapsed lung watching all his individual success from this season disappear. LeBron’s 21-year streak is over. And the All-NBA team is on its way to becoming a participation trophy for whoever managed to stay healthy.

So what’s the real fix? Two options – and the NBA needs to pick one.

Option 1: Fine the teams, not the players. Load management isn’t a player problem – it’s a front office decision. Teams are the ones telling stars to sit. So hit them where it hurts. Fines for sitting healthy star players in nationally televised games, if they can go, repeat offender penalties that escalate fast, and real consequences that make franchises think twice before pulling a healthy player off the court. Put the accountability where it actually belongs, right on the nose of these corporate fools.

Option 2: Shorten the season. I am a little indifferent on this one, but I think the argument is valid. The 82-game schedule is a decision made from a different era of basketball. The game is faster, the athletes are bigger, and the wear and tear on these players is greater than it’s ever been. You want stars playing more games? Give them a schedule that doesn’t grind their bodies into dust by February. Cut it to 70 games, or even 65 – ironic, and watch load management disappear on its own. Players don’t want to sit. They want to play. Give them a schedule that makes that possible. Either option beats what we’ve got now. Because what we’ve got now is a rule that punishes the wrong people, creates the exact problem it was supposed to prevent, and is slowly crumbling the legacy of some of the greatest players the game has ever seen.

Abolish it. Reform it. Do something right! Right now, the 65-game rule isn’t saving the NBA – it’s killing everything that once made it great!