{"id":709773,"date":"2026-04-13T17:49:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T17:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709773\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T17:49:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T17:49:18","slug":"how-nuggets-bruce-brown-played-82-games-but-doesnt-qualify-for-nbas-65-game-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709773\/","title":{"rendered":"How Nuggets’ Bruce Brown played 82 games but doesn’t qualify for NBA’s 65-game rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bruce Brown played 82 games this season.<\/p>\n

But as far as the NBA’s 65-game rule for awards eligibility is concerned, the Denver Nuggets<\/a>‘ guard didn’t qualify.<\/p>\n

Now to be fair, as many fans on social media are saying, Brown probably wouldn’t have contended for any awards (although he is a high-quality defender and bench contributor).<\/p>\n

But still, it’s confusing. The NBA says it wants players to play at least 65 of the 82 possible regular season games to win an award.<\/p>\n

Brown doesn’t miss a night at the office all season, and yet he doesn’t count. What gives?<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Nikola Jokic proves once again there’s no one like him<\/a><\/p>\n

Why don’t Bruce Brown’s 82 games count as 65 games?<\/p>\n

The NBA also throws a minutes clause into its award setup.<\/p>\n

Brown played fewer than 20 minutes on too many occasions — those games don’t get counted the same as those in which a player exceeds 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

Usually, any player that’s going to win an award will play well more than 20 minutes in a game (often between 30-40) unless an injury occurs early.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0This is the most improbable triple-double in NBA history<\/a><\/p>\n

Brown, though, was just a bench rotation piece. His minutes fluctuated, and they often weren’t that high.<\/p>\n

So he played 82 games, for real, but didn’t play the 65 games that would count in the NBA’s eyes.<\/p>\n

Confusing? Yep.<\/p>\n

But that’s just the way it is.<\/p>\n

More basketball news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Brown played 82 games this season. But as far as the NBA’s 65-game rule for awards eligibility…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[7,301,187,3943,6,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-709773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-nuggets","11":"tag-denvernuggets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nuggets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116398664213162551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}