Game Thread Spurs (24-9) @ Pacers (6-28) (Fri 01/02/26) [6:00 PM CDT]

tim_duncan_fan said:
I don't know what can be done about Vic's health. His body is just super spindly and long. This will probably always be a thing that has to be mitigated.
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You're right, but it doesn't have to be the sentence you're thinking it will be -- Curry's ankles say hello.

Wemby's body will obviously require significant attention, and training dedication from him, through his entire playing career, but that doesn't == extended missed time every single season. Everyone thought Curry was doomed with the "glass ankles" and could never handle the load of full NBA seasons, yet there he is, one of the more elderly star players in the entire NBA, 4 rings under his belt.
 
Dbreiden83080 said:
That’s not something anybody should be worried about. Keep him healthy, keep developing the young guys and get it rolling. Hopefully if he’s healthy the entire second half of the season, he really finds a rhythm.
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I'm sure going forward Victor will be very worried about it as if he never plays 65 games he won't ever be eligible for a supermax :st-lol:

Going to be crazy next year when even when he hurts they run him out there for 2 minutes just so it counts as a game played :st-lol:

Shocked more players haven't done that yet tbh
 
Sugus said:
THIS is the issue with the rule: the arbitration.

Your point is valid in a vacuum, but doesn't reflect the reality of the rule at all: with 82 games in a season, the 65-game cutoff represents 79.27% of games to be played -- neither "never playing" nor "a majority of the games", both of which would be much more sensible qualifiers.

As it stands, it's ridiculously constrictive, not to mention having no flexibility for edge cases (if Jokic/SGA suffered an off-season injury and came into the season late, already missing the cut-off, but then hard-carried the team into a top seed, why wouldn't they still be the MVP? etc etc).

In a "sicko" way, I'm ""glad"" Jokic will miss extended time with his injury - there definitely has to be a "chips falling" moment where multiple top candidates are robbed in plain sight so that the NBA is pressured into changing the rule. Make it 41 games and it's golden, tbh
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No matter where the cutoff gets placed, be it 65 games or 50 games or 41 games X% of games, it's going to be arbitrary. What makes the "golden" 41 games you suggest any less arbitrary or more meaningful than 65 games?

My hunch is that if you go back in time and look at all the award winners previous to this rule being put in place, they all probably played closer to 80%+ of games, which is how probably they came up with it in the first place (I didn't check any of this, like I said, it's just a hunch).

Someone mentioned that this is to serve another master - the TV networks... and, yeah... of course it is. This is still a business, and the league did some soul searching and discovered that load management was hurting their business. This shouldn't be surprising or controversial to anyone. And we should all be clear, the rule isn't about making sure that award winners proved their worthiness by playing some arbitrary number of games... the rule is in place because the league wants it players to play, and this creates incentives (especially with super max contracts being tied to awards) for player to play.

There is a good argument for the moral hazard this creates in pushing players to play before they are ready. That needs to be addressed, for certain. However, I think people are missing the point of why this rule exists. They're upset because their favorite player won't qualify and they view 65 games as arbitrary, but it's because they are looking at things through a different lens of what the league is trying to accomplish with the rule. This is a profit optimization rule, not a "make sure the award truly goes to the most worthy person" rule.
 
poopbox said:
I'm sure going forward Victor will be very worried about it as if he never plays 65 games he won't ever be eligible for a supermax :st-lol:

Going to be crazy next year when even when he hurts they run him out there for 2 minutes just so it counts as a game played :st-lol:

Shocked more players haven't done that yet tbh
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The league saw it coming, so there is a 20 minute minimum for the game to count, with a couple of allowed exception games (Wemby has used one in the game he played 17 minutes)
 
scott said:
The league saw it coming, so there is a 20 minute minimum for the game to count, with a couple of allowed exception games (Wemby has used one in the game he played 17 minutes)
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That was just a dumb move by Mitch burning an 'exception game' by mere 3 minutes ..Wemby could have strolled back and forth the court to fulfill the minutes limit..I really hope that doesn't end up costing him the award/all NBA though i think the odds are stacked against him anyway
 
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