Good morning, I’m Tyler Lauletta, filling in another day for your usual host, Dan Gartland. I’ve been feeling the post-Olympics blues—there’s nothing like waking up to curling every morning—but with MLB spring training underway and college basketball conference tournaments set to start soon, I will have my afternoon sports calendar filled soon enough.
On to the newsletter.
In today’s SI:AM:
🏌️ Koepka watch
NBA’s Stringent Participation Rules Are Setting the League Up for a Messy Awards Season
When the Pistons hosted the Thunder on Wednesday night, it was a possible preview of the NBA Finals. Both teams sit atop their respective conferences and are led by MVP candidates in Cade Cunningham and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
The matchup didn’t live up to its billing, with SGA missing his ninth-straight game as he continues to work his way back from an abdominal strain. Including Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City’s top four scorers were out for various reasons. The Pistons went on to comfortably win, 124-116, though the Thunder worked hard to make things interesting in the fourth quarter.
A star of SGA’s caliber sitting out due to injury is nothing new, and the Thunder are going to take every precaution in planning his return to ensure that he’s healthy when the playoffs come around. If that means losing a game against the Pistons in February to make sure they’re at full strength when they meet again in June, that’s a fair trade every time.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s absence highlighted another developing story in the NBA as we approach the end of the year—how one simple stat may affect awards season.
Under the league’s current rules, a player cannot miss more than 17 games to be considered for end-of-year honors such as MVP or being named to an All-NBA team. The threshold was implemented to help ensure that the best players take the court most nights in the era of load management.
On paper, it sounds like a good idea, but this year’s MVP race is already showing the potential pitfalls of using a 65-game minimum in practice. With 25 games left to play, it looks like Gilgeous-Alexander, Cunningham and Nikola Jokić are the three front-runners to win MVP, with Luka Dončić and Victor Wembanyama still holding an outside chance at making a late push for the award.
Of those five, all but Cunningham have already used at least 10 of their allotted 17 game absences. Jokić will be out of the running for awards season if he misses two more games, while Wembanyama has a buffer of four games he can miss before being ruled ineligible.
It is not hard to imagine a season where a player who is clearly the MVP by the numbers turns out not to be the official MVP because he missed 19 games due to some combination of health issues, personal reasons, and his team’s long-term planning.
Wembanyama is the player that jumps to mind in this scenario, as it is, one, easy to imagine him soon being the best player in the league by a wide margin and, two, easy to imagine him dealing with a lingering injury. If there’s a year where Wemby is averaging 30/12/5/5 and is the best defender in the sport, the league is going to look ridiculous handing the award off to someone else because he didn’t play enough games.
It wouldn’t take much alteration to make the rule work. Bringing the number of appearances required down from 65 to 55 or even 60 would be a good start—a player who appears fewer times than that is unlikely to be in the MVP conversation in the first place. This year is already showing us that a player can help define a season while still creeping close to missing enough games to write himself out of the history books, as is currently the case with Wemby and Jokić.
If SGA can’t make it back from injury and Jokić misses two more games this season, Cunningham will become the MVP front-runner and all will still be okay with the basketball world. But the league should view this year as a warning of the awkward reality the current system could unintentionally create, and it should work to change it before we get a baffling awards season.
The best of Sports IllustratedIn today’s Digital Cover, Kevin Sweeney traces how Illinois found a star in Keaton Wagler when other schools overlooked him.Albert Breer checks in on the critical quarterback decisions facing the Browns and Colts. He also has more on the potential trade market for A.J. Brown and Maxx Crosby.Gilberto Manzano reports on the sights and sounds from Day 2 of the NFL combine, where Mike Vrabel shared his interviewing tips and Miami edge Rueben Bain Jr. said Titans quarterback Cam Ward been lobbying the Titans to draft him.Matt Verderame digs into Bain’s “kill-all” mentality and Texas Tech edge David Bailey’s psychological edge. He argues that landing a pass rusher like Bain or Bailey could be the key to winning a Super Bowl.Five-time major champion Brooks Koepka, competing in his third event since returning to the PGA Tour, could contend for a tournament title this week, Bob Harig writes.The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. This photo of Wemby from All-Star weekend by Jenny Fischer.
4. The Spurs commentary desk getting so caught up in a fight about cheesesteaks that they forgot to listen to the referee announcing the result of a challenge.
3. This textbook Joker three at the buzzer.
2. Getty photographer Elsa Garrison (one of my favorites) breaking down some of her top shots from the Winter Olympics.
1. Wemby playing defense like the tallest kid at your middle school.