The NBA still has not figured out the right timing for its regular-season awards
The NBA has struggled to find the perfect way to present its postseason awards.
In previous years, it scattered the awards throughout the postseason and that seemed to work, right? But then it decided to take the NHL and NFL route with an awards show at the end of the postseason, which had moderate success.
Going back to the intermittent style seemed like a solid plan but today’s social media society and instantaneous reaction to the postseason have made the awards rather ill-timed. WhileJoe Mazzulla deserved his Coach of the Year honor, it was presented weeks after the Celtics were thumped in the first round by the 76ers. Jalen Duren was named third-team All-NBA after a porous postseason performance for the Pistons.
Is there a right way for the NBA to hand out its regular-season honors that will appease the old school and new school?
The media voting was released last week, leaving interpretation of their voting to be influenced by the postseason. In other words, if X player had a great season, his All-NBA vote was verified. If he struggled in the playoffs, then the vote becomes heavily scrutinized. The timing of the voting release seemingly dilutes the message of being a regular-season award.
One reason the voting was pushed back into the play-in tournament is that the NBA had to review the eligibility of Luka Doncic, Cade Cunningham, and Anthony Edwards, who did not meet the 65-game limit but appealed because of special circumstances. Doncic and Cunningham were approved and that cost the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown a spot on the All-NBA first team.
The 65-game rule has been heavily criticized but the NBA is not listening for now.
“Remember at one point we had an award show and maybe waited too long to announce, and now we’ve timed them throughout the playoffs,” commissioner Adam Silver said prior to Game 1 of the Finals. “In terms of supporting a change, I’m frankly not ready to support a change. I just take a step back to the situation we were dealing with when we went into the last collective bargaining negotiation and put in place the 65-game rule.
“In the few prior seasons before we put in place that rule, roughly one-third of all our All-NBA players did not participate in 65 games. So we came together with the Players Association and said, ‘We’ve got to find a way to incentivize our stars to be on the floor, and we have to find a way to incentivize our teams to have our stars on the floor.’ ”
Are star players pushing to play more games to meet the games minimum? The answer is yes and there are going to be cases such as Cunningham’s that occasionally occur. The Pistons forward suffered a collapsed lung and broken rib in a collision and missed 11 games late in the regular season before returning for the final three.
The NBA does not want players winning awards playing less than 70 percent of the season. It’s a bad look for the sport, regardless of what the players think.
“I think the rule is working. Now, we built into the rule the opportunity to make exceptions in extraordinary circumstances if a player is missing by a game or two, and obviously we had two exceptions this year,” Silver said. “But I’m not ready to support a change yet. But I think what gets left out, anywhere we draw the line, there’s always going to be players on the other side of that line. Even getting to the rules we just changed around tanking, I think what you’re seeing, in not just the NBA but modern sports, analytics are predominant in that teams are following clear incentives. Players are following clear incentives.
“I think just in the same way we change rules to incentivize teams to be focused on winning in the regular season, we change rules to incentivize players to participate in the regular season, and I think they have largely worked.”
Speaking of tanking, the league is hoping the newly implemented lottery rules will prevent teams from purposely losing games in the future. It was another blemish for the league’s credibility. Beginning in 2027, the team with the three worst records will have considerably lower odds to land the top three picks and no team will be allowed to pick first in consecutive years or have a top-five pick in three consecutive drafts.
“Tanking is not a new issue for this league,” Silver said. “I think maybe what surprised us all a little bit is how quickly it became acceptable behavior in this league. I think it used to be limited, frankly, to a small group of teams. I think I could genuinely stand up and talk about rebuilding and not say ‘tanking,’ and it was practiced in a different way. I don’t know how else to say it.”
As was reported here last week, the majority of the leagues governors were disgusted with the tanking practices of their minority brethren and demanded change. After a rather distributing trend in the final few weeks of the season developed with certain losing teams sitting players with phantom injuries or pulling players in the fourth quarter of competitive games, the NBA overhauled its draft system.
“We found ourselves in a situation this year where all of a sudden it seemed like a third of the league maybe was responding in what an economist would say is very rational behavior but non-traditional behavior in terms of what they saw as a clear incentive to fall to the bottom of the standings,” Silver said. “And it may be or likely was compounded by the fact that there’s a perception of a very deep draft class this year. But we ultimately concluded that we needed to take immediate action. Again, our fans were speaking loud and clearly about this being unacceptable.
“Oddly you had situations where in some markets, fans were cheering on their teams and saying, of course this is the right strategy, you have to be either really good or really bad. Which also created a certain amount of unfairness because those same fans may have been saying that’s a good, long-term strategy to win games but at the same time saying, don’t ask me to pay for this product or watch this product in the meantime.”
What will also help curtail tanking is that the 2027 draft class is not considered nearly as deep or talented as this year’s pool of players. Teams such as the Nets, Pacers, Jazz, and Wizards are not expected to tank next year. The NBA should be far more competitive than in previous years.
“There was largely agreement among our team owners, general managers and our coaches and ultimately the Players Association that this was not what we wanted to see in the NBA,” Silver said. “I’m thrilled, frankly, that we got this done this year. Looking forward to seeing how this will play out next year — teams have an incentive to win all of their games.”
NO REPEATS
Another new NBA champion coming
With the Thunder eliminated by the Spurs in the Western Conference finals, the NBA will have a ninth different champion in nine years. And of all of the previous champions had high hopes of repeating. In the past few years, the 2023 champion Nuggets were eliminated in the second round by the Timberwolves. The Celtics lost to the Knicks a year later. Repeating is hard and there will be plenty of teams chasing the Spurs and Knicks for the crown again in 2027. Silver’s quest for parity has been achieved, but it has dampened the chances of a true dynasty or even a repeat champion.
“Look, it’s not a coincidence that we’re repeatedly having different champions,” ABC analyst Tim Legler said. “It’s so difficult to pull it off because so many things went right for you in that season in which you win the first one, health at the top of the list. It’s also keeping your personnel together, having the right kind of chemistry, having the right guys that continue to be selfless, and make it all about achieving that end goal, and then health on top of it.”
As the Celtics journeyed through their 2024-25 season, they noticed they were everyone’s Super Bowl. Seemingly no opposing player had a bad night. Bench players were scoring career highs. Every game was a challenge and the regular season was exhausting. Then came the playoffs.
“It’s just difficult to pull that off in consecutive years, particularly when teams that came up short that feel like they’re close, they’re the ones that are going to go out and continue to try to tinker with the roster and add the right piece,” Legler said. “Maybe they had a year, that runner-up team or that team that lost in the conference finals, they had a team in which guys weren’t healthy that time of the year or in the playoffs, and maybe next year they do get that.”
The Celtics entered the 2025 playoffs as the No. 1 seed but played a rigorous five-game series against the Magic, where Jayson Tatum sustained a badly bruised wrist after a hard foul. And then against the Knicks, the Celtics allowed 20-point leads to waste in the first two games and then Tatum ruptured his Achilles in Game 4. The chance for repeat was over.
“It’s just hard. So many things have to go so right for you to get one,” Legler said. “That’s why we’ve seen so many teams have a difficult time repeating. You’ve got to get the right group. First the right player, I think as your leader and best player, and then you’ve got to have the right group and core around them that have good health. Most importantly, take accountability for each other and play for the greater good of the group. It’s hard to find that magic, and it’s hard to keep that. I think that’s why it’s become more and more difficult.
“Will we get another one? Yes, absolutely. We will get another team, I believe. If it’s not back-to-back, maybe you’ll get a team that wins three in five years. It’s going to happen again, but I think it’s certainly much more difficult maybe than it used to be.”
Former NBA forward Richard Jefferson said championship teams have to be blessed with good health, and that blessing doesn’t usually last another season.
“I think, even if you look at the prior back-to-backs, the three-peats, some of these teams, health was a very big part of it,” he said. “You look at OKC’s health situation. You look at Golden State when they lost to Toronto [in 2019], their health situation there towards the end. Shoot, we have a player currently playing in the NBA still that went to eight straight Finals [LeBron James] and we just gloss over that because we’ll look at, oh, well, their [Finals] record. It’s like eight straight Finals that this player went to, and we’re not able to get a back-to-back champion currently.”
In all honesty, the dominance of the Warriors — four titles over an eight-year period — is one of the primary reasons for this current parity. Golden State being able to add the likes of Kevin Durant to an already super team encouraged other league owners to push for more salary cap constraints such as the daunting second apron. It’s more difficult to build dynasties because it’s more difficult to pay star players who make those dynasties.
“I think it gives us a good look at how hard it is to do some of these feats we’ve seen in the past,” Jefferson said. “I think the salary cap structure and these aprons don’t allow you to say, hey, we’re going to keep our guys together no matter the cost because we drafted them, we picked them, and we want to keep our players together. So, I think even that has added a component that might make it a little bit more difficult where there’s teams that have decisions to make. Do we keep our All-Star, All-NBA guy, or do we keep this up-and-coming guy?
“But we will see it again. You need health. You look at Boston won the championship, and they were favored the following year. So, you’ll get it, but I think health has been the biggest struggle for that, to be able to have that happen in recurring seasons.”
LAYUPS
While the Pistons enjoyed their most successful season in two decades, they’ll have to deal with the consequences of being a successful team with younger players on rookie contracts. Duren, coming off a disappointing playoff performance, is eligible for a five-year, $287 million extension as his rookie contract expires. But he played poorly in stretches as the top-seeded Pistons were eliminated by the No. 4 seed Cavaliers in the second round. Duren was an All-NBA player this season, which catapulted his potential salary. But he cost himself potentially millions of dollars because of his playoff performance, which may add intrigue into the negotiations. He is the Pistons’ center of the future though and a deal should be worked out … The Thunder have some serious roster decisions to make this summer as center Isaiah Hartenstein and forward Luguentz Dort each have team contract options and both may have played their final games in Oklahoma City. If the club wants to upgrade its roster following the Game 7 Western Conference Finals loss to the Spurs, they may have to shave salary considering the extensions for big manChet Holmgren and guard/forward Jalen Williams each begin next season. Holmgren, who struggled in the San Antonio series, will get a $28 million raise from this past season while Williams, who endured an injury-plagued season, will get a $35 million bump in salary. Also, reserve forward Kenrich Williams has a $7.1 million team option. If the Thunder decline all three of those options, their salary cap still rises by $6 million because of the extensions. Oklahoma City can package its draft assets and perhaps trading a younger player for a more experienced player to capitalize on the championship window of star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander … The Celtics will have some roster work to do if they plan to compete for a championship next season. They have only one player, John Tonje, committed to a two-way contract, meaning they have to more to fill likely before training camp. The Celtics have the 27th and 40th picks in the draft, and that 40th pick could be a prime candidate for a two-way deal. Big man Amari Williams and guard Max Shulga were upgraded to standard NBA contracts before the playoffs, leaving two two-way openings. The Celtics could also use the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas to target other two-way candidates from other clubs.
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