With NBA stars Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Victor Wembanyama all in danger of missing out on All-NBA awards due to the recently implemented 65-game threshold rule, the concept of “a player’s best ability is availability” has never been more prevalent.
The creation of the rule came on the heels of Joel Embiid’s MVP season. The oft-injured big man has been the poster child of “load management,” an epidemic that Adam Silver and the league office deemed was rampant in the NBA, as shown through the subsequent invocation of their minimum-game requirement.
There has been a ton of pushback on this rule, ranging from players to podcast hosts, who think that it’s too rigid in its boundaries.
It is blatantly frustrating to consider the fact that Jokic, who has played in at least 69 games in every year of his career up until this one and is having one of the greatest statistical seasons of all time (again), might not even be able to make third-team All-NBA because he hyperextended his knee.
Jokic isn’t skipping winnable games to rest up, robbing paying customers of their Jokic experience — he dodged a season-ending injury and is doing all that he can return. There’s a decent chance he plays 64 games this season. If that were the case, his total stats would still surpass many of his top-15 counterparts.
A case like Jokic’s this season is why the league and NBA media need to simply shift their focus; this whole debacle could be solved if everyone weighed counting totals more than averages.
Deni Avdija Shows the Value of Total Stats
Take a player like the Portland Trail Blazers’ Deni Avdija, for example.
Deni Avdija is the Blazers’ workhorse. Portland has been devoid of a single point guard ever since its 13th game of the season. In that time, Deni has taken on all ball-handling and facilitative responsibilities when he’s on the court.
He is not the NBA’s most precise and efficient scorer or creator. Right now, he is 16th in points per game (26.1), 47th in rebounds per game (7.1), 16th in assists per game (6.9) and 13th in minutes per game (35.4).
Through that lens, Deni is pretty solid all-around; a top-20 scorer and passer who can rebound well for his size.
Now, looking at his total counting stats, Deni Avdija is: fifth in total points (1,043), 21st in total rebounds (283), fifth in total assists (276) and first in total minutes (1414.3).
Defense aside (of which Avdija plays plenty), that looks like an indisputable top-10 player this season, and potentially a top-five one.
The case to be made here is not that Deni is currently one of the five best players in the NBA, but instead that he’s having a potentially top-five season, which is what All-NBA awards are about.
https://twitter.com/TheLeadSM/status/2010769085781377438
Luka Doncic Does It All…When He’s Around
The opposite side of the coin here would be Luka Doncic.
Doncic is purely dominant when he’s on the court. If NBA stars were circuses, Doncic would be Cirque du Soleil.
In per-game stats, Luka Doncic is: first in points (33.3), 33rd in rebounds (8.0), fifth in assists (8.8), third in minutes (36.5).
The scoring champion who cleans the glass while being a top-five creator — that’s the story that Doncic’s averages tell, and they aren’t wrong.
Now take his totals: seventh in total points (967), 47th in total rebounds (232), 10th in total assists (254), 69th in minutes (1058.5).
That looks like an inarguably worse player than Avdija, no?
Avdija trails Luka in all four aforementioned per-game categories this year but leads him in each total category. While Luka is a much better offensive player than Deni, he’s done much less for his team this season in totality.
https://twitter.com/LakersLead/status/2009864474795167814
All-NBA Awards Don’t Need to Be This Hard
A player’s best ability is his availability; that has never been more true in the NBA. Players are gingerly resting with calf issues all the time. It’s unfortunate, but it’s part of the game now to protect them long-term.
The impact a player has on his team night in, night out should be weighted properly when looking at it through the lens of a singular season. Over the course of a career sure, averages are great.
But these All-NBA awards are about the current season. They’re a snapshot of what happened that year for the record-keepers and basketball savants to remember eternally and for the casuals to recall semantically.
They also determine a lot as far as player contracts, so voters should not take them lightly. Putting a black-and-white, hard rule on how many games a player must play is a cold way of determining whether or not they were a top-15 player in the league that season.
Just put a player’s total impact side-by-side next to someone else’s and let those stats determine their worth, not what they did on just the nights they were able to give it a go.
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