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haven't the spurs won at exactly the same rate without wemby this year? sort of beside the point, but it just kind of devolves back into "what's an mvp (or other award) anyway?"

i actually think if you drag the argument out long enough, everyone could agree there's some threshold, right? like if you played one game and 100 points, 75 rebounds, and 38 assists, and your team beat the best team in the league by 50, but you missed the other 81 games, you're most certainly the best player, but you're not getting an award based on season-long performance. if you grant this, you're then just quibbling about numbers, and i think the 80% number was just where the people who spent time researching this settled.

they could just soften it and put it into awards voting guidance that cases in which a player participated in fewer than 65 games or played less than xx total minutes should be exceptional (i.e., basically everyone would have had this person on their all nba ballot or first on the mvp ballot).

i don't think finals mvp is dictated by the 65 games rule. that would be crazy.

i think the most interesting thing is that load management has caught on kind of in the face of evidence. like, teams are incredibly risk averse about playing in games, but when the games start, they're totally unconcerned about playing their primary guys 40 minutes. like, we play luka 36+ minutes on heavy load every time he goes out there. the only player in the league whose minutes are clearly capped even when healthy is wemby.

when kobe blew his achilles, it probably wasn't that he didn't rest on b2bs, it was that he was playing 40+ minutes at incredible intensity for a month-long period.

the league supposedly did a study finding that load management was generally not associated with injury risk (and i believe this), and they still tried to adjust the schedule (reducing b2bs) just based on the theory--which is fine, as i also buy that to some degree. i just think it's weird that the teams have sort of collectively decided that missing full games but playing breakneck in the ones you play is the way, whereas playing hard in fewer minutes across more games is silliness. like, we can't keep lebron to 28mpg at age 41?! this is impossible?! the man is playing 34mpg! and i get that lebron (and older guys) are unique cases because of all the ramp-up they need just to be able to get out there, but that's not the way everyone does it.