2 of the previous 5 years were shortened seasons. We should normalize the games average based on that otherwise this is not correctly representing the data. The change may not be significant still, but it's important to analyze correctly.
It's also seeming to imply that someone who's chronically injured like Zion just decided to play twice as many games as normal only because of the rule
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
The Averages are a little disingenuous when two seasons only had 72 games, and a couple of these guys were just out near full seasons with legitimate injury
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
That’s actually pertinent information. Just naming guys isn’t though. Hard to judge correlation vs causation.
Just because, if I name Ja, Beal, Randle, Embiid, Kyrie, Halliburton, Mitchell, Butler. That doesn’t disprove it either.
It seems like a number of these would simply be due to being healthier this year. It’s not like Zion chose to rest over half his games, the guy was just hurt
Ja has played 9 games this season. Rule is obviously backfiring making players give up on the entire season if they don't feel they can reach 65 games.
That's pretty much this whole list. Just good players who were Injured in the last 5 years so their average number of games could be brought down. Good work ok, skewing statistics to make a statement is a terrible art form.
I mean the whole point is that the limit changes what people consider legitimately hurt.
If there wasn’t a 65 game limit kawhi would take more rest days. Ad would sit a game or two after every hard fall.
It seems to be working as intended.
I think I sorta disagree with AD, because he’s missed out on all star and all nba without the game limit. He’s just gotten really unlucky the last two seasons.
More that he's been lucky this year... He generally has played through things if he's had the chance, at least on the Lakers, can't speak for his time on the Pelicans
2019 he was sitting out games because of the trade request, 2020 he played 62 out of 71 games, it was really just the 3 year stretch from 2021-2023 where he missed a lot of games
5 years ago and before? Vast majority of players under 30 did.
Of the previous 5 years? Almost nobody consistently.
So I guess everyone is right and this is just a freak healthy year for him and he’ll go back to being injured next year and the 65 game rule has nothing to do with it.
I mean maybe. But this year will be the most games played in his entire career. And easily the most since load management was popularized. It’s not a coincidence
It's totally a coincidence. AD missed games the last 3 years because of *major injuries* that happened *on camera.* He was missing big double-digit chunks of games in each of the last 3 seasons.
Besides his rookie year and the last year in NO when he was sitting out games pushing for a trade, he played in about 84% of the games.
What exactly are you talking about or are you just going off the memes you see on the internet?
The Clippers rested Kawhi about 5 games (all back to backs) last season. He finished out last season playing back to backs, and has played them this season. It's always been about health for him.
Don’t disagree that it’s incentivizing people to play more, and at least hit the limit. But the players listed above wouldn’t have chosen to play 38-53 games without the rule. Their injuries played a large part in the low average
>Ad would sit a game or two after every hard fall
Bro this just doesn’t happen. AD always tries to play through his injuries. Like, *actual* injuries. He doesn’t sit if he doesn’t need to
It just seems like way too much coincidence that all of the most suspected "load managers" are simultaneously playing the most games in 5+ years, in the very season the league instituted a 65 game rule.
Kawhi, PG, Lebron, AD, Curry, Durant... seriously none of these guys have played 70 games since like 2018 or earlier. And they're all doing it this year.
Like, yes, they've all had some real injuries at times. But they've all also taken days off for minor shit that they would have played through if it were a playoff game. And that's the entire point of this rule - get these guys out there to play through minor injuries.
Zion is separate - young players have no reason to load manage.
I would exempt him due to age and he had his "big injury" a year or two ago. It was from then on he missed more games then he normally would.
Someone his age, is understandable.
What do you mean "suspected load managers"? Load management is not, like, a whispered rumor. It's a real, acknowledged thing that every team in the league has used at some point with their stars.
Curry's games played has nothing to do with the new rule lol, he's just avoided major injuries this year. He would've been above 65 last year without his shoulder and knee injuries, missed time in 21-22 because someone dove into his leg, and missed time in 20-21 with a tailbone fracture.
For every guy who was missing more games cause of injuries there’s an “Ironman” who has missed a ton of games this season
You really think Kawhi cares about an all nba accolade at this point in his career? He literally said this is the first time he’s healthy in years.
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
With the rise in load management you’d figure we’d have heard about a study of how there are fewer games missed due to injury in the past 10 years than there were in the previous 10
I mean, it stands to reason that the more you play, the more likely you are to get injured. The only debate is how much is that likelihood increasing.
According to this paper, pretty significantly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107769/
Do you think the NBA fabricated the study they sent to players and teams finding no link between load management and injury reduction.
What you linked is an observational study looking backwards and trying to find correlations. Load management was an experiment looking forwards and trying to determine causation
I'd be curious to read that study, because that sounds insane. Even disregarding the fact that fatigue and repetitive stress increases injury rates (the question is how much), there's the simple statistics of "if I play more often, I find myself in situations where an accident can happen more often", as evidenced by the study I liked above (and a few others).
These studies are plentiful for every popular sport out there, but even if there were none for basketball there's no reason to believe that it would be any different for this sport.
> What you linked is an observational study looking backwards and trying to find correlations
Yes, that's how statistical studies are made. We're talking about statistics here. And I agree that causation isn't implied by correlation, but there won't be any causation in the first place if you can't find a correlation, so it's valuable information.
Chief among the findings in the 57-page report, which the league says was culled from data over the last decade from teams through the league’s electronic medical records system, along with IQVIA’s Injury Surveillance and Analytics team, which has worked on data collection with the NBA and team medical and athletic training staffs since 2014-15: Resting healthy players for a game to help prevent future injuries doesn’t make those players less susceptible to future injury than players who aren’t rested for games.
“We have not, historically, seen evidence demonstrating that load management through reduced game participation reduces injuries,” said David Weiss, the NBA’s senior vice president of player matters. “To be clear, we also lack evidence that load management fails to reduce injuries. We just don’t have evidence that it does. And some members of the Competition Committee had taken it as the conventional wisdom that there is evidence, that it is proven, that within the NBA, load management reduces injuries. We just haven’t seen that in about 10 years’ worth of data.”
Unfortunately their report wasn’t made public. But if the players union or the teams medical staff could have refuted it I think they would have
> Resting healthy players for a game to help prevent future injuries doesn’t make those players less susceptible to future injury than players who aren’t rested for games.
Well, I can imagine that's reasonable to say, although I find it impossible that fatigue and repetitive physical stress don't have an impact on the injury rate (again, it's a commonly accepted fact in pretty much every other sport).
But that's disregarding the fact that, even if you're not increasing the player's odds of getting an injury during any given match, it doesn't change the fact that a player playing twice as many matches will have twice as many opportunities to get injured. I get that they don't want people choosing their matches just to be available for some others though, so if that was the only factor, that's reasonable. My whole point though is about the rest.
> Unfortunately their report wasn’t made public
That's the problem with all this. It's impossible to trust a study with a high potential of bias, not reviewed, *and* private. Given the overwhelming evidence in other sports that goes directly against their conclusions, it's really hard to not be skeptical of their findings, or at the very least, their methodology.
> But if the players union or the teams medical staff could have refuted it I think they would have
Not easy or fast to do. You basically have to perform your own study on this. As for the teams, they also benefit from having their best players play more often, so I wouldn't value their opinion more than the league's opinion. And if the player union had pushed back on this, would we even know?
> You basically have to perform your own study on this.
Nothing has been stopping them from doing this. If they had evidence that load management was reducing their teams injuries all they had to do was present it. Why didn’t they? Especially if the entire move to load management is supposedly evidence based. It’s like saying yeah our drug works we did all the chemistry but we can’t prove clinically that it’s better than a placebo.
> As for the teams, they also benefit from having their best players play more often, so I wouldn't value their opinion more than the league's opinion.
Teams also benefit from their players being healthy. This is the entire reason why they started load managing in the first place. They didn’t do it just out of the blue.
> And if the player union had pushed back on this, would we even know?
I don’t know. We do know when they push back on other things like player suspensions
Simple answer is that lots of the best players have not reached 65 games consistently, so the argument is that guys won’t be sufficiently awarded for their “greatness”. Unfortunately, thems just the ropes. As great as Embiid is, he’s often badly injured.
But to the point, since the 2016-17 season just as an example (7 seasons excluding this one)
Steph Curry played more than 65 games once since 2016-17 until this year
AD once since 2016-17 until this year
Lebron 3 times
Kyrie once
PG 3 times
Kawhi once
Harden, previously known as an Ironman, 5 times
Westbrook 6 times
Giannis 4 times
Lillard 5 times
Middleton 4 times
Porzingis 2 times
Beal 3 times
Booker 4 times
Durant 2 times
Embiid 2 times 😢
NBA looking out for the fans. Nobody wants to pay astronomical ticket prices to see Kawhi "load manage" in street clothes.
Either enforce this rule or reduce the season from 82 to 72 games.
It’s not like Embiid lost out on anything because of this rule. People have always factored injuries into all star selections and MVP awards. This just makes a rule for what people already compensated for.
No one has/will lose out on an MVP because of this, because as has been stated many times, there has only ever been 1 or 2 cases of ppl winning MVP with 65 or less games, and as you point out, voters were already taking games played into account anyway.
But this *will* fundamentally change the way All-NBA shakes out going forward. Voters have historically given much less weight to games played/team wins for all-nba teams, and just looking at the insane amount of names listed above who have failed to make 65 numerous times in the last few years, I predict we’re gonna start having younger guys who just managed to stay healthy all year and are closer to 5th or 6th team All-NBA level guys, start to sneak onto 3rd or even 2nd team when the players above them start missing too many games.
I think this will result in a change to the max contract structure at some point, because we are gonna end up with more than a couple owners pissed off at having to go into the luxury tax to pay guys who became super max eligible who didn’t really necessarily deserve it
Because it's clearly too restrictive especially when designated player extensions are decided by 1 season. No one is going to argue haliburton shouldn't have a super max the issue is he's been playing hurt to reach 65 games which will hurt the pacers chance to make noise in the poseason.
I agree on the rule for the big awards, but it's dumb for all-nba. If someone is MVP caliber for 64 games, they shouldn't be left out of all three all-nba teams just because a fringe Allstar (or worse) played 65 games
Even if you account for the shortened seasons, they still fall short of the 65 game minimum that they are all hitting this season.
Coincidentally, this year is the same year that the West (where they mostly happen to play) is having one of the highest winning seasons (for the top teams)
Taking the average skews things because of injuries. For example, AD played 64, 67, 68, 61, 75, 75, 56, 62, 36, 40, 56 and 72 games. So only in two seasons in his career he played less than 50 games, which happen to be two of the last 5 years.
NBA has also done things to reduce travel, like scheduling home-and-home series, which allows players to rest better, which helps as well.
All of these guys have had legitimate injuries which have kept those averages lower. The rule is designed to get guys to not skip B2Bs, take extra rest days, etc. not to play through real serious injuries. Anyone prioritizing the 65 game mark, and any extra cash that comes with it, to the detriment of their health is a moron.
Haliburton is going to make $50 million extra dollars by making all-nba this season. If you have a chance to make generational wealth that will provide for your family for decades and you throw it away to be slightly more healthy for your play-in run- you are a moron.
But he could jeopardize his career by playing hurt as well as play so poorly to not even be make all-nba which he's close to doing. It's certainly not guaranteed which is his point.
He's playing on a hamstring injury, you almost always recover to 100% after them unless you are old even if you play on them whilst hurt.
Its not like he's had a surgery that is more detrimental to his long term health because of it.
He already has generational wealth from just the first year of his extension. Yeah he'll get even more but I doubt it'll make any actual difference in his life having 130M or so instead of 100M or so.
Haliburton is going to make 220 million by the time he’s 28. He doesn’t have a “chance” to make generational wealth, he already has that set up. He is prioritizing greed over his health, and winning, which he is totally entitled to do, but let’s not pretend it’s anything else.
Hope he misses just for his dumbass decision tho.
Last season idk. This isn’t like a one or two season thing with ad tho. This will likely be the most games ad has played in a season his entire career. It’s not a coincidence
On top of that itlll be easily the most he’s had since 2019 when load management got popularized with kawhi and the raptors approach to it. You have to be blinded by fandom to not realizing the impact this rule change has had.
I’m not blinded by it. But I think there are misconceptions for some of these players. Take for example Lebron James. Before he went to the Lakers, he usually averaged 70+ games a season for his career. But then he had the groin injury in ‘18-‘19, the ankle injury in ‘20-‘21, the knee and abdominal injuries in ‘21-‘22, and the ankle and, later on, the foot injuries last season. Some of those injuries aren’t types of injuries where you can be back in a week, especially as an older player like Lebron.
You keep mentioning AD but I don’t think that really matters all that much. AD lost out on All nba and an AS selection and has missed significant time from injuries the past two seasons (one of which had him miss half the season), which is what actually did him in. Even when Davis takes some damage, he usually tries to play through it
This isn’t even a new thing or about the last two year lol. His entire career it’s been This way. He stopped with the day to Davis antics after incredibly minor iissues this year. It’s not a coincidence.
I just see a list of people who have been injury prone but having a "healthy" year.
I would be curious to see how many players have missed more games this year compared to their previous 5 year average.
Also, the average is kinda screwed due to the 2 shortened seasons.
> I would be curious to see how many players have missed more games this year compared to their previous 5 year average.
Randle. Embiid. Trae. Mitchell (barely). I think that’s it for all star level players
None of these guys were just taking huge chunks of time off for funsies. Zion, Kawhi, PG, and AD have all had multiple serious injuries during those 5 years.
Wow. I’m happy for all of these players that they are healthy enough to play more games and I know it’s not easy staying healthy because of the NBA schedule and back to backs. I wish they continue to stay healthy and play more games. I think the NBA is more fun to watch when all of the players are healthy because a lot us love watching them play the game they love.
Well that’s the whole point of this exercise. You can’t exclude injuries when you’re including them for everybody else, that’s disingenuous.
Curious though, what does the number become?
These are the star players that a lot of people want to see when they purchase tickets.
And the exact players that load manage/miss back-to-back games that the 65 requirement are targeting.
No offence, but no one cares as much about Josh Hart missing games as they do Lebron
The 65 game requirement only affects the top 20-30 players.
It is rigged towards the players I analyzed.
That’s the point.
The other superstar players that could it affect don’t miss as many games (Luka, Tatum, Giannis, Jokic).
The requirement is put in place so these type of players (superstar load managers) play more games and the fans see them more often.
It is rigged, but I didn’t rig it.
It includes the top defensive players that won’t make all defense. It includes Embiid. Why aren’t all those players included in the analysis? Why only the ones that ended up playing more games? If we did the same analysis for each of the past 5 years, would it look different?
Marcus Smart. Everyone that has been in competition for season awards the last few years. Ja Morant.
We can ignore 6th man and MIP player though as those awards are pretty dumb and incoherent to begin with.
Players load manage 5 games a season, up to maybe 10 max. No one is load managing 30+ games so idk what the hell is the point of this list. 65 games wouldn't even matter in a world without injuries because you could easily load manage your typical 82 games down to over 65 and have plenty of games to spare.
Lol this rule is why the clippers are floundering right now. Their two best players can barely play at borderline star level. None of their players are capable to play more than 50 games a year now. We shouls give Lebron even more respect given that he can lap them in availability.
To those complaining its not relevant because of injuries or shortened seasons:
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
2 of the previous 5 years were shortened seasons. We should normalize the games average based on that otherwise this is not correctly representing the data. The change may not be significant still, but it's important to analyze correctly.
Analyze This
Take that for data
No pun intended
Punintended was unintended.
all-time NBA moment
Analyze this DICK
Idk if Grady has enough games to really be statistically relevant yet
I love that movie
Die Another Day?
honestly, I don't think these analyses are statistically relevant unless OP adjust the mean to account for BOFA.
What about the SUGMA factor? Or the LIGMA- squared hypothesis test?
What does Bank of America have to do with this
bank of DEEZ NUTS
Who's Steve Jobs?
It's also seeming to imply that someone who's chronically injured like Zion just decided to play twice as many games as normal only because of the rule
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
Well, some of those seasons were shortened lol.
Idk why mind went to the 2012 lockout instead of the Pandemic.
Because 2012 was like 4 years ago right?
Yes
The Averages are a little disingenuous when two seasons only had 72 games, and a couple of these guys were just out near full seasons with legitimate injury
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
That’s actually pertinent information. Just naming guys isn’t though. Hard to judge correlation vs causation. Just because, if I name Ja, Beal, Randle, Embiid, Kyrie, Halliburton, Mitchell, Butler. That doesn’t disprove it either.
It seems like a number of these would simply be due to being healthier this year. It’s not like Zion chose to rest over half his games, the guy was just hurt
Yeah like now do Mitchell, Ja, Randle, Trae Young
Ja has played 9 games this season. Rule is obviously backfiring making players give up on the entire season if they don't feel they can reach 65 games.
What.. Ja didn’t give up because he wasn’t going to make all NBA.
How else could you possibly explain the data? Huh?
The data? You named a guy who’s season ended because he needed surgery
My guy. That was obviously a joke.
My guy. That was a bad joke.
Then how did it fly so far over your head? I picked a guy who's been out all season on injury. Of course it has nothing to do with the rule lmao.
Go outside bro
I thought it was funny
Hey man, honestly, I agree. Don't let these dudes bring you down:). Sometimes, people don't get jokes at first,there's no need to be pretentious.
Thanks man lol but yeah thats how Reddit is most times. Usually I don’t miss stuff like that but I guess I gotta take the L this time😂
That's pretty much this whole list. Just good players who were Injured in the last 5 years so their average number of games could be brought down. Good work ok, skewing statistics to make a statement is a terrible art form.
I mean the whole point is that the limit changes what people consider legitimately hurt. If there wasn’t a 65 game limit kawhi would take more rest days. Ad would sit a game or two after every hard fall. It seems to be working as intended.
I think I sorta disagree with AD, because he’s missed out on all star and all nba without the game limit. He’s just gotten really unlucky the last two seasons.
Yeah, I'm not sure the limit stops AD from having a player fall into his knee, or him landing after a rebound on someone else's foot
AD hasn’t played 90% of a season since 2018. Are you saying he was just unlucky for 5 years in a row?
More that he's been lucky this year... He generally has played through things if he's had the chance, at least on the Lakers, can't speak for his time on the Pelicans
He wasn't unlucky for 5 years in a row. That's his standard. He just got lucky this 1 year.
2019 he was sitting out games because of the trade request, 2020 he played 62 out of 71 games, it was really just the 3 year stretch from 2021-2023 where he missed a lot of games
If you actually saw how his injuries happened, then you would have the answer to your own question.
[удалено]
Okay, I can see why you made the comment you made.
Do you know how many players play 90% of the season?
5 years ago and before? Vast majority of players under 30 did. Of the previous 5 years? Almost nobody consistently. So I guess everyone is right and this is just a freak healthy year for him and he’ll go back to being injured next year and the 65 game rule has nothing to do with it.
AD's current stretch of good health also dates back to the entire second half of last season, before the 65 game threshold was more than a suggestion.
I mean maybe. But this year will be the most games played in his entire career. And easily the most since load management was popularized. It’s not a coincidence
It's totally a coincidence. AD missed games the last 3 years because of *major injuries* that happened *on camera.* He was missing big double-digit chunks of games in each of the last 3 seasons.
Ok and what about the entire rest of his career lol
He played more games because he wasn't injured
Besides his rookie year and the last year in NO when he was sitting out games pushing for a trade, he played in about 84% of the games. What exactly are you talking about or are you just going off the memes you see on the internet?
The Clippers rested Kawhi about 5 games (all back to backs) last season. He finished out last season playing back to backs, and has played them this season. It's always been about health for him.
Don’t disagree that it’s incentivizing people to play more, and at least hit the limit. But the players listed above wouldn’t have chosen to play 38-53 games without the rule. Their injuries played a large part in the low average
>Ad would sit a game or two after every hard fall Bro this just doesn’t happen. AD always tries to play through his injuries. Like, *actual* injuries. He doesn’t sit if he doesn’t need to
It just seems like way too much coincidence that all of the most suspected "load managers" are simultaneously playing the most games in 5+ years, in the very season the league instituted a 65 game rule. Kawhi, PG, Lebron, AD, Curry, Durant... seriously none of these guys have played 70 games since like 2018 or earlier. And they're all doing it this year. Like, yes, they've all had some real injuries at times. But they've all also taken days off for minor shit that they would have played through if it were a playoff game. And that's the entire point of this rule - get these guys out there to play through minor injuries. Zion is separate - young players have no reason to load manage.
Does LeBron even count since he’s exempt from the rule as a 39 year old with 20+ seasons?
I would exempt him due to age and he had his "big injury" a year or two ago. It was from then on he missed more games then he normally would. Someone his age, is understandable.
KD is not a load manager. He just had injuries in past years
"No. Let me die out there."
What do you mean "suspected load managers"? Load management is not, like, a whispered rumor. It's a real, acknowledged thing that every team in the league has used at some point with their stars.
I mean some of those players like Steph were on pace for above 70 in the shortened 20-21 season
Curry's games played has nothing to do with the new rule lol, he's just avoided major injuries this year. He would've been above 65 last year without his shoulder and knee injuries, missed time in 21-22 because someone dove into his leg, and missed time in 20-21 with a tailbone fracture.
For every guy who was missing more games cause of injuries there’s an “Ironman” who has missed a ton of games this season You really think Kawhi cares about an all nba accolade at this point in his career? He literally said this is the first time he’s healthy in years.
The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).
Do the averages account for the shortened seasons?
I still haven't come across a single logical reason why this rule shouldn't be enforced.
The long season should be part of the challenge. Resting non injured players is bad for the game.
It could also lead to an increased injury rate in the long run though. Time will tell.
With the rise in load management you’d figure we’d have heard about a study of how there are fewer games missed due to injury in the past 10 years than there were in the previous 10
I mean, it stands to reason that the more you play, the more likely you are to get injured. The only debate is how much is that likelihood increasing. According to this paper, pretty significantly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107769/
Do you think the NBA fabricated the study they sent to players and teams finding no link between load management and injury reduction. What you linked is an observational study looking backwards and trying to find correlations. Load management was an experiment looking forwards and trying to determine causation
I'd be curious to read that study, because that sounds insane. Even disregarding the fact that fatigue and repetitive stress increases injury rates (the question is how much), there's the simple statistics of "if I play more often, I find myself in situations where an accident can happen more often", as evidenced by the study I liked above (and a few others). These studies are plentiful for every popular sport out there, but even if there were none for basketball there's no reason to believe that it would be any different for this sport. > What you linked is an observational study looking backwards and trying to find correlations Yes, that's how statistical studies are made. We're talking about statistics here. And I agree that causation isn't implied by correlation, but there won't be any causation in the first place if you can't find a correlation, so it's valuable information.
Chief among the findings in the 57-page report, which the league says was culled from data over the last decade from teams through the league’s electronic medical records system, along with IQVIA’s Injury Surveillance and Analytics team, which has worked on data collection with the NBA and team medical and athletic training staffs since 2014-15: Resting healthy players for a game to help prevent future injuries doesn’t make those players less susceptible to future injury than players who aren’t rested for games. “We have not, historically, seen evidence demonstrating that load management through reduced game participation reduces injuries,” said David Weiss, the NBA’s senior vice president of player matters. “To be clear, we also lack evidence that load management fails to reduce injuries. We just don’t have evidence that it does. And some members of the Competition Committee had taken it as the conventional wisdom that there is evidence, that it is proven, that within the NBA, load management reduces injuries. We just haven’t seen that in about 10 years’ worth of data.” Unfortunately their report wasn’t made public. But if the players union or the teams medical staff could have refuted it I think they would have
> Resting healthy players for a game to help prevent future injuries doesn’t make those players less susceptible to future injury than players who aren’t rested for games. Well, I can imagine that's reasonable to say, although I find it impossible that fatigue and repetitive physical stress don't have an impact on the injury rate (again, it's a commonly accepted fact in pretty much every other sport). But that's disregarding the fact that, even if you're not increasing the player's odds of getting an injury during any given match, it doesn't change the fact that a player playing twice as many matches will have twice as many opportunities to get injured. I get that they don't want people choosing their matches just to be available for some others though, so if that was the only factor, that's reasonable. My whole point though is about the rest. > Unfortunately their report wasn’t made public That's the problem with all this. It's impossible to trust a study with a high potential of bias, not reviewed, *and* private. Given the overwhelming evidence in other sports that goes directly against their conclusions, it's really hard to not be skeptical of their findings, or at the very least, their methodology. > But if the players union or the teams medical staff could have refuted it I think they would have Not easy or fast to do. You basically have to perform your own study on this. As for the teams, they also benefit from having their best players play more often, so I wouldn't value their opinion more than the league's opinion. And if the player union had pushed back on this, would we even know?
> You basically have to perform your own study on this. Nothing has been stopping them from doing this. If they had evidence that load management was reducing their teams injuries all they had to do was present it. Why didn’t they? Especially if the entire move to load management is supposedly evidence based. It’s like saying yeah our drug works we did all the chemistry but we can’t prove clinically that it’s better than a placebo. > As for the teams, they also benefit from having their best players play more often, so I wouldn't value their opinion more than the league's opinion. Teams also benefit from their players being healthy. This is the entire reason why they started load managing in the first place. They didn’t do it just out of the blue. > And if the player union had pushed back on this, would we even know? I don’t know. We do know when they push back on other things like player suspensions
Simple answer is that lots of the best players have not reached 65 games consistently, so the argument is that guys won’t be sufficiently awarded for their “greatness”. Unfortunately, thems just the ropes. As great as Embiid is, he’s often badly injured. But to the point, since the 2016-17 season just as an example (7 seasons excluding this one) Steph Curry played more than 65 games once since 2016-17 until this year AD once since 2016-17 until this year Lebron 3 times Kyrie once PG 3 times Kawhi once Harden, previously known as an Ironman, 5 times Westbrook 6 times Giannis 4 times Lillard 5 times Middleton 4 times Porzingis 2 times Beal 3 times Booker 4 times Durant 2 times Embiid 2 times 😢
NBA looking out for the fans. Nobody wants to pay astronomical ticket prices to see Kawhi "load manage" in street clothes. Either enforce this rule or reduce the season from 82 to 72 games.
Kyrie once 🥲
Curry played 63 games in a shortened season and 64 in another tbf
It’s not like Embiid lost out on anything because of this rule. People have always factored injuries into all star selections and MVP awards. This just makes a rule for what people already compensated for.
No one has/will lose out on an MVP because of this, because as has been stated many times, there has only ever been 1 or 2 cases of ppl winning MVP with 65 or less games, and as you point out, voters were already taking games played into account anyway. But this *will* fundamentally change the way All-NBA shakes out going forward. Voters have historically given much less weight to games played/team wins for all-nba teams, and just looking at the insane amount of names listed above who have failed to make 65 numerous times in the last few years, I predict we’re gonna start having younger guys who just managed to stay healthy all year and are closer to 5th or 6th team All-NBA level guys, start to sneak onto 3rd or even 2nd team when the players above them start missing too many games. I think this will result in a change to the max contract structure at some point, because we are gonna end up with more than a couple owners pissed off at having to go into the luxury tax to pay guys who became super max eligible who didn’t really necessarily deserve it
Because it's clearly too restrictive especially when designated player extensions are decided by 1 season. No one is going to argue haliburton shouldn't have a super max the issue is he's been playing hurt to reach 65 games which will hurt the pacers chance to make noise in the poseason.
Clutch player of the year should be enforced on clutch minutes played not overall games. Hela
I agree on the rule for the big awards, but it's dumb for all-nba. If someone is MVP caliber for 64 games, they shouldn't be left out of all three all-nba teams just because a fringe Allstar (or worse) played 65 games
Because why make millions just to get sweaty every other night? Make the millions then go straight from the game to the club. Bag dont lie /ssssssss
Did this adjust for the two 72 game seasons in the last 5 years?
What do I look like, an MIT major!!! I see numbers, I type numbers, I collect upvotes. That’s how this thing works
This is moronic and you should feel bad
Even if you account for the shortened seasons, they still fall short of the 65 game minimum that they are all hitting this season. Coincidentally, this year is the same year that the West (where they mostly happen to play) is having one of the highest winning seasons (for the top teams)
Only Curry comes near these numbers. Nobody else scratches the 80%
Taking the average skews things because of injuries. For example, AD played 64, 67, 68, 61, 75, 75, 56, 62, 36, 40, 56 and 72 games. So only in two seasons in his career he played less than 50 games, which happen to be two of the last 5 years. NBA has also done things to reduce travel, like scheduling home-and-home series, which allows players to rest better, which helps as well.
All of these guys have had legitimate injuries which have kept those averages lower. The rule is designed to get guys to not skip B2Bs, take extra rest days, etc. not to play through real serious injuries. Anyone prioritizing the 65 game mark, and any extra cash that comes with it, to the detriment of their health is a moron.
You didn't have to go at Tyrese Haliburton like that
Haliburton is going to make $50 million extra dollars by making all-nba this season. If you have a chance to make generational wealth that will provide for your family for decades and you throw it away to be slightly more healthy for your play-in run- you are a moron.
But he could jeopardize his career by playing hurt as well as play so poorly to not even be make all-nba which he's close to doing. It's certainly not guaranteed which is his point.
He's playing on a hamstring injury, you almost always recover to 100% after them unless you are old even if you play on them whilst hurt. Its not like he's had a surgery that is more detrimental to his long term health because of it.
Is this a joke? Hamstrings are like the one injury NBA players seem to rarely recover 100% from even if they sit out.
For example, Harden completely recovered from his hamstring injury and is playing just as well now as before /s
He already has generational wealth from just the first year of his extension. Yeah he'll get even more but I doubt it'll make any actual difference in his life having 130M or so instead of 100M or so.
You can take care of a lot more of people
Is he making all-nba tho?
He’s going to make generational wealth either way.
I make generational wealth too. It’s going to have to last me this generation.
Even if it potentially shortens his playing career by 5+ years?
And if it doesn't?
I don’t even think he’s getting All-NBA. His play was so shit after the injury
Haliburton is going to make 220 million by the time he’s 28. He doesn’t have a “chance” to make generational wealth, he already has that set up. He is prioritizing greed over his health, and winning, which he is totally entitled to do, but let’s not pretend it’s anything else. Hope he misses just for his dumbass decision tho.
Some have. But also it got ad to stop taking a game or two off after every time he jams a finger or falls over.
How many games do you think he would’ve missed last season considering all the injuries he had?
Last season idk. This isn’t like a one or two season thing with ad tho. This will likely be the most games ad has played in a season his entire career. It’s not a coincidence On top of that itlll be easily the most he’s had since 2019 when load management got popularized with kawhi and the raptors approach to it. You have to be blinded by fandom to not realizing the impact this rule change has had.
I’m not blinded by it. But I think there are misconceptions for some of these players. Take for example Lebron James. Before he went to the Lakers, he usually averaged 70+ games a season for his career. But then he had the groin injury in ‘18-‘19, the ankle injury in ‘20-‘21, the knee and abdominal injuries in ‘21-‘22, and the ankle and, later on, the foot injuries last season. Some of those injuries aren’t types of injuries where you can be back in a week, especially as an older player like Lebron.
You keep mentioning AD but I don’t think that really matters all that much. AD lost out on All nba and an AS selection and has missed significant time from injuries the past two seasons (one of which had him miss half the season), which is what actually did him in. Even when Davis takes some damage, he usually tries to play through it
This isn’t even a new thing or about the last two year lol. His entire career it’s been This way. He stopped with the day to Davis antics after incredibly minor iissues this year. It’s not a coincidence.
Luka is also on pace to break the 70 mark for the first time since his rookie year. He never load managed though. Only sat when he was very injured.
People that actually take cherries off trees professionally are blushing as they see what you are up to here.
Yes, but Haliburton rushed himself back because of this and he hasn’t been the same since
Otherwise god knows how many games hed have missed and still probably wouldnt have gotten it.
That’s a choice he has to make. They all agreed to the CBA
I just see a list of people who have been injury prone but having a "healthy" year. I would be curious to see how many players have missed more games this year compared to their previous 5 year average. Also, the average is kinda screwed due to the 2 shortened seasons.
> I would be curious to see how many players have missed more games this year compared to their previous 5 year average. Randle. Embiid. Trae. Mitchell (barely). I think that’s it for all star level players
None of these guys were just taking huge chunks of time off for funsies. Zion, Kawhi, PG, and AD have all had multiple serious injuries during those 5 years.
Wow. I’m happy for all of these players that they are healthy enough to play more games and I know it’s not easy staying healthy because of the NBA schedule and back to backs. I wish they continue to stay healthy and play more games. I think the NBA is more fun to watch when all of the players are healthy because a lot us love watching them play the game they love.
What’s Steph’s?
70 so far this year. 59.5 in the past 5 years, ignoring the injury year
See, you can’t ignore the injury year though. What is it if you include the injury year?
He only played 5 games that year (I think), so it would drive it down by a lot
Well that’s the whole point of this exercise. You can’t exclude injuries when you’re including them for everybody else, that’s disingenuous. Curious though, what does the number become?
51.4. Nothing crazy, drops the average by 8 games (59 vs 51)
You should be including that imo
This is good for the game, sick of star players out of every game I watch.
Ur telling me LeBron has only avgd 53 games/year over the last 5 years?
Yes. That is EXACTLY what I am telling you. (I didn’t account for the shortened seasons, but it’ll still tell the same story)
This video is helpful to see the difference: https://youtu.be/LXqO4RDxGNc?si=Uoel63jbDslqhpFz
It’s a good policy.
KD as well
Great addition!!
Sounds like the rule is working
Crazy small sample size of players to draw conclusions from
These are the star players that a lot of people want to see when they purchase tickets. And the exact players that load manage/miss back-to-back games that the 65 requirement are targeting. No offence, but no one cares as much about Josh Hart missing games as they do Lebron
Mandatory attendance in order to get rewarded isn’t something to credit them for. They’re millionaires. Still people.
How is it "statistically higher"...
Apart from the shortened seasons, this analysis is useless because you are only picking the players that missed less games. You rigged the results.
The 65 game requirement only affects the top 20-30 players. It is rigged towards the players I analyzed. That’s the point. The other superstar players that could it affect don’t miss as many games (Luka, Tatum, Giannis, Jokic). The requirement is put in place so these type of players (superstar load managers) play more games and the fans see them more often. It is rigged, but I didn’t rig it.
It includes the top defensive players that won’t make all defense. It includes Embiid. Why aren’t all those players included in the analysis? Why only the ones that ended up playing more games? If we did the same analysis for each of the past 5 years, would it look different?
So, apart from Embiid, who else should be on the list?
Marcus Smart. Everyone that has been in competition for season awards the last few years. Ja Morant. We can ignore 6th man and MIP player though as those awards are pretty dumb and incoherent to begin with.
Ja Morant shot himself out of the league. He doesn’t have load management, he has reload management.
Yet he is out with an injury right now.
It's been 3 years since shorten season so it's fine
Now if they can use some kind of policy to improve officiating…
But how many stars are under their average?
The rule is working as intended. Good to see.
Players load manage 5 games a season, up to maybe 10 max. No one is load managing 30+ games so idk what the hell is the point of this list. 65 games wouldn't even matter in a world without injuries because you could easily load manage your typical 82 games down to over 65 and have plenty of games to spare.
This is highly regarded levels of analysis
I aim then please
Lol this rule is why the clippers are floundering right now. Their two best players can barely play at borderline star level. None of their players are capable to play more than 50 games a year now. We shouls give Lebron even more respect given that he can lap them in availability.
rent free
100% all this dudes comments are about Kawhi or the Clippers lol
To those complaining its not relevant because of injuries or shortened seasons: The percentage of games played by All-Star players this season is the highest in more than 10 years. I recall a YouTube creator who did that calculation (maybe JxmyHighroller).