Post NBA All-Star break is usually the most anticipated part of the season, with playoff spots up for grabs and the race for the NBA Most Valuable Player award. But instead, it has been a spreadsheet of missed games for the main players in the discussion to take home the regular season’s most coveted individual award. 

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has missed seven games and won’t be reevaluated until next week. Nikola Jokic sits on the edge after missing nearly a month with a bone bruise; two more absences — which he may need anyway for rest in the final weeks of the season — and he’s toast for every major award. Victor Wembanyama has missed 14 games, Luka Doncic has missed 12 games, Steph Curry has missed 16, and are quickly counting with no timeline on their return. Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James are already ineligible for regular-season honors, no matter the kind of form they have in the final stretch. 

This is the effect of the 65-game rule; the league’s big, blunt hammer meant to force stars onto the floor, and now it’s not a question of who is best but who can stay healthy enough to pass the 65-game benchmark. The rule, tucked into the 2023 collective bargaining agreement, is simple on paper and demands players to play at least 65 regular-season games with 20+ minutes in 63 of them, or forget about MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, All-NBA, or the massive contract bonuses those honors trigger. 

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The NBA sold it as a cure for load management, especially after the outrage stemming from the mid-to-late 2010s. The league wanted its best stars available for national TV games, the in-season tournament, and the casual fan who tunes in once a month expecting to see the best. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it has turned the bodies of these superstars into liabilities.

Why the 65-Game Rule Quickly Became Disastrous

The league has got it all wrong from jump street, trying to create a rule that was just a lazy, one-size-fits-all penalty disguised as progress. It never tried to distinguish between a player sitting out because his coach wanted to “manage his load” and a guy whose hamstring pulled on a routine drive. It seems like durability was viewed as a character flaw; instead, the reality is that this is a league where big men, older veterans, and high-usage stars carry disproportionate physical tolls.

Last season, only 164 players league-wide hit the 65-game mark — which was roughly 36% of roster spots. Injuries were already climbing, and the epidemic went nuclear this season as star players (recent All-Stars or All-NBA honorees) had missed over 200 games by mid-November, nearly double the rate from two years earlier. The very policy the league thought was going to make players always available to watch is the same one taking them off the court.

The impact has been brutal to say the least.

Last season’s All-NBA teams featured five players who are already ineligible this year: Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Williams, James, and Antetokounmpo. That means at least five “new” All-NBA spots are wide open for players who might be the 18th or 20th-best in the league on a given night. It is now a case of games played rather than being worthy to be selected. 

James himself called it “catastrophic” for player legacies and bank accounts, and he’s right because All-NBA selections are the golden ticket to supermax extensions, which bumps a player from 25 percent to 30 percent of the salary cap or 30 to 35 percent. Miss the threshold by one game, and a franchise player can lose tens of millions. That is simply terrible in the NBA. Franchises are stuck making brutal financial calls on guys who were injured through no fault of their own. Williams already felt the sting, watching a potential $48 million swing vanish after missing 18 games to the start of the 2025-26 season, which made him ineligible for All-NBA team honors.

The original sin was the league assuming it could legislate availability in a sport that has never been more demanding. The NBA wanted to promise TV partners and ticket buyers a full menu of superstars every night. When in reality, it created a participation trophy system that reduces the credibility of the awards when the real superstars can’t reach the podium because they missed games.

In hindsight, the new rule just created a new problem instead of fixing load management.

Then, How Can Load Management Truly Be Solved?

The 65-game approach has entirely missed the mark and proved that it is a flawed method of addressing the problem at hand. When just around 30% of players are playing over 65 games, and others are missing games at nearly double the rate of previous years, it calls for a really deep reality check.

The NBA will have to admit the hard truth and, first of all, drop the rule. If the league’s fear lies in the fact that load management will become rampant, it can tweak the system to find an effective means of reducing the crisis.

The first change, granted it is a highly controversial one, will be to shorten the regular season. Yes, the NBA wants more games on television, and fans perhaps don’t want to deviate from the traditional 82-game schedule. However, a shorter season means extra rest days between games, and that extra rest means the odds of periodic injuries will reduce. There would also be fewer back-to-back games; teams are lined up to play at least 16 back-to-backs this season.

Back-to-backs are simply unnecessary in the grand context of things. They simply disregard the health and well-being of athletes, but until or if the regular season is shortened, the NBA will keep on serving games in a way that is not even balanced because teams don’t play the same number of consecutive games.

Another means the league can implement to avoid load management is by creating a threshold for injuries. In case of any injury lasting 10+ games, the player is evaluated with his per-game advanced metrics, and if it still ranks high, he remains award-eligible. With this, players don’t have to hesitate pushing their bodies to some limits in fear of missing out on individual honors. The league cannot treat a player who’s played 64 games the same as one who has played 30 games. It just isn’t logical.

The league should also flip to positive incentives. Teams that are able to hit 90% star-minute availability can earn credits, which could be an extra second-round draft pick or some tangible rewards like minor cap relief. As such, teams don’t have to rest their superstars.

The NBA needs a system reset, but it needs courage to admit that the blunt hammer of the 65-game rule hasn’t worked. While it may seem like load management is something that won’t ever truly be fixed, there is no denying that there are ways to abolish it.