Tyrese Haliburton has had a tremendous season for the Indiana Pacers this far, averaging 23.6 points and 12.6 assists per game this season. However, a hamstring injury cost him nearly a few weeks of action, and as the All-Star break approaches, the Eastern Conference starter is dangerously close to being eliminated from awards contention already. Haliburton has missed 13 games this year and if he misses 18, he will fall short of the new 65-game threshold to be under consideration for awards and this year’s All-NBA teams.
That’s a particularly big deal for Haliburton, who would see his contract extension signed last summer currently worth $207 million be worth more than $40 million more if he made an All-NBA team this year. If he continues on the pace he’s played at through the first half of the season, especially if he continues leading the league in assists by a wide margin, he’d be a near-lock to land on one of the three All-NBA squads (even in a crowded guard race).
As Haliburton said to The Athletic’s James Boyd when asked about it, he and many other players view it as a “stupid rule,” noting it’s what the owners want and, a bit tongue in cheek, said the most important thing is that “the owners are happy.”
“I think it’s a stupid rule, like plenty of the guys in the league, but this is what the owners want, so as players, we gotta do our job and play in 65 games if we’re able to,” Haliburton said after practice Monday. “So, that’s what I gotta do, take care of my body to be able to play in those games, and I think you’re seeing other players in the league kind of face the same thing. As long as the owners are happy.”
It’s hard to blame Haliburton for his frustration here. The idea with the rule was to provide another performative attempt at limiting load management by the NBA to please TV networks in the midst of broadcast rights negotiations — hence the “as long as the owners are happy” bit from Haliburton. The problem this would cause was easy to see, because it was a lock that someone would get legitimately hurt and miss somewhere between 18-21 games while putting together one of the league’s best seasons.
In this case, Haliburton is now one more minor injury away from being that player, and his annoyance with being caught in this position this season when he needs All-NBA to maximize his contract (and is playing at that level) is more than understandable. Some, like Joel Embiid, have made clear that they won’t worry about the 65-game threshold when it comes to the awards debate, even though he’d be an MVP frontrunner. However, that’s not messing with his earning potential nearly as much as it is Haliburton’s, and the truth is, voters have always factored in games played when voting on awards.
The MVP of the league has almost always played more games than this threshold, because voters factor it into their calculus unless it’s a year where every top player misses chunks of time. The same goes for the other awards, but All-NBA is, in particular, a unique set of circumstances because you might be able to argue for a few guys having put together more complete seasons than someone, but if someone leads the league in assists and plays in 60 games like Haliburton might, that guy has earned a third-team selection probably more than someone that played 66 games with a considerably lesser resume. The league won’t care because they look like they are being hard on load management and the players did agree to it in negotiations, but the potential issues that were always obvious certainly seem like they are going to come to fruition this season.