This past week, the NBA’s rule requiring players to participate in a minimum of 65 out of 82 games to be eligible for awards has once again come under fire. I have been in favor of adjusting or abolishing this requirement for a while now, but NBA superstar Cade Cunningham’s recent freak injury urged me to speak on the corruption of this rule.
For background, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement before the 2023-24 season, which extends through the 2029-30 season.
The CBA lays out conditions for how NBA teams, players and executives must operate to avoid punishment. Each CBA update is mainly focused on updating financial restrictions, explaining how teams must operate to stay within the salary cap and outlining penalties for going over that cap.
The NBPA is composed of nine “labor union” members, current NBA players who lead negotiations with NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Player representation is valuable, but nine can’t represent the collective beliefs of 450 players. That became more evident each year since the rule’s addition.
Since its installation in the 2023-24 season, this requirement has left deserving candidates out of the voting for prestigious awards and has led to superstars being left off the All-NBA or All-Defensive teams.
The three All-NBA teams and two All-Defensive teams are meant to recognize each season’s 15 best players and 10 best defenders, respectively. However, a rule with no exceptions, requiring players to play 65 of 82 possible games to qualify for these teams alongside prolific awards like MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, dilutes the value behind who is selected for these teams.
On March 17, Cade Cunningham exited the Detroit Pistons’ game against the Washington Wizards following a scary fall. It was later reported Cunningham had suffered a collapsed lung. He has played in 61 of 74 games this season, with six of only 13 missed games coming after he suffered this freak injury.
Cunninhgham’s case perfectly demonstrates why the rule needs to be abolished or at least needs stipulations added. Cunningham is a consensus All-NBA First Team candidate and top five in MVP voting, according to a 2025-26 NBA MVP Award Tracker. But he most likely won’t have the opportunity to even be on the ballots for either. His monstrous averages of 24.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 9.9 assists per game have propelled the Pistons to sit at first in the Eastern Conference and third in the entire NBA.
Cunningham is scheduled to be re-evaluated later this week, and by the time of re-evaluation, there will be only six games remaining on the Pistons’ schedule. Cunningham needs to play in four more games to meet the requirement, and that seems asinine to ask him to rush back from something like this while his team already has its playoff spot locked up.
The initial idea behind this rule sounds valid on the surface: to keep players from load managing, which means to intentionally sit out games with no serious injury or valid reason to miss time.
However, it has become a restriction that faults players for unavoidable injuries, ones like Cunningham’s that could be life-threatening if recovery is rushed simply to meet a threshold created to restrict players from sitting out games in immoral, unnecessary senses.
Despite the passion of players like Cunningham to be on the court 24/7, nobody should be made to feel like they should rush back from potentially career-ending injuries, and this requirement is entering that territory.
Both the NBPA and NBA commissioner Silver deserve scrutiny for how this agreement is panning out, but their current reactions to the fire their agreement is taking have differed greatly.
The NBPA is hilariously going back on their word, using Cunningham’s recent string of bad luck to say the rule is at minimum, “amended,” according to ESPN. On the other end of the spectrum, Silver has come out and said he thinks the 65-game requirement “is working,” according to The Athletic.
For Silver to say that, as if there have been no mishaps, is absolutely asinine, and somebody from the NBPA needs to step up to make a change if the commissioner won’t initiate one himself.
I am sure Cade Cunningham, like several other players since this rule was introduced, has some voice in the back of his mind telling him to rush recovering fully from this scare to earn awards that would etch his tremendous season in the history books. A 24-year-old in the peak of his career, though, should not even have to consider rushing this type of recovery, and the NBA needs to, at the very least, alter the 65-game requirement, if not nix it completely.
The backlash to this requirement is absolutely justified on all fronts and goes even deeper than just excluding players deserving of awards from being on the voting ballot. Health concerns are beginning to rise as players feel the need to conceal injuries or rush recovery. This rule needs to change to prevent players from potential injury.
Jack Muldowney is a freshman studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Jack Muldowney about their column? Email/tweet them at jm760224@ohio.edu or @JackMuldowney1.
