Some transparency: I planned to vote for Derrick Jones Jr. for All-NBA 2nd team defense. He played 76 games, started 66, so I was surprised he wasn’t listed as eligible in that category.
Here’s why: Players are required to play 62 games of at least 20 minutes. Jones played 48 such games. He had 10 other games where he played between 18 minutes and 19:58. He had 4 more of between 16:46 and 18.
Rules are rules, and I don’t think Jones missed out on a bunch of votes, but he missed out on mine, FWIW.
3 comments
DJJ is prolly not deserving of that if everything is taken into account, but making minute thresholds for awards accessible to roleplayers as well is a mistake. Afaik, only MVP/All-NBA/DPoY are tied to max contract eligibility so they should just impose the minute threshold on those.
I think minutes treshold make sense to avoid someone starting, playing just 1 minute, then going to the bench for the rest of the game. That’s not how you’re supposed to reach 65 games.
BUT I think if you play enough games, like 70+ total, you should also qualify if you played enough minutes total. DJJ played on average 23.5 minutes per game, so I think it would still make sense if he qualified.
They should use total minutes played in the season. That seems to be much fairer. If you’re blowing out a team no need to keep playing for award eligibility. But if you play high minutes other nights that should count for something.