Steve Kerr has never been shy about calling out NBA rules he believes are broken. Ahead of Friday’s game against the Detroit Pistons at Little Caesars Arena, he had a new target. The 65-game minimum for postseason award eligibility, a rule introduced in 2023-24 to combat load management, is not working the way it was intended, and Kerr wants it fixed.
Why Steve Kerr and Draymond Green Want the 65-Game Rule Revamped
The specific issue Kerr raised was a detail buried in the rule’s fine print. Games only count toward the 65-game minimum if a player logs at least 20 minutes, with two exceptions allowed for games between 15 and 19 minutes.
Kerr said he had only recently become fully aware of that threshold, and his reaction was blunt. “You would think that benchmark would include games where guys actually played,” he said. “Yes, it needs to be revamped.”
“It needs to be revamped.”
Steve Kerr on the 65-game rule for awards. Mentions Draymond Green’s all-defense candidacy as an example. He’s played 56 games. pic.twitter.com/WbltdLz9lF
— Joseph Dycus (@joseph_dycus) March 20, 2026
He pointed to Draymond Green as his immediate example. Green is chasing his 10th All-Defensive Team selection this season but has played 5 games beneath the 20-minute threshold out of his 56 total appearances entering Friday, with 15 games remaining. Given that postseason awards can trigger contractual raises and bonuses, the stakes of the eligibility question are real.
Green himself addressed the rule’s broader problems earlier this week on “The Draymond Green Show,” using Cade Cunningham’s situation as his primary example. The Detroit Pistons star, one of the league’s best players and a legitimate first-team All-NBA candidate, played 61 games this season before being sidelined with a collapsed lung.
Under the current structure, Cunningham is at serious risk of falling short of the 65-game threshold. “I don’t think there’s a soul on the voting committee that will look at Cade’s 61 games played and say, ‘I don’t think he qualifies for first-team All-NBA,'” Green said. “Here is a guy who’s done everything right, has a collapsed lung, and he’s going to miss All-NBA because of this dumb-a** rule that does not fix the issue.”
The Broader Debate Over Shortening the 82-Game NBA Schedule
Kerr’s criticism of the 65-game rule sits within a broader argument he has been making for some time about the NBA’s schedule. He has called for reducing the season from 82 to 72 games on multiple occasions this season, arguing that the pace and physicality of the modern game make the current schedule unsustainable for player health and product quality.
“I want to make sure we give our fans the very, very best product we can,” Kerr said. “I just think there’s probably a way to do that without ignoring some of the obvious schedule-related injury issues we’ve established.”
Green has been aligned with that view, pointing out that the pace of today’s game bears little resemblance to the era when the 82-game schedule was established. “The fastest pace team in the 90’s would probably be the slowest pace team today,” Green said on his podcast.
“It’s drastically different. The game has changed, and I think the amount of games, you’re putting all these things to protect the amount of games played by stars, the 65-game rule, all these things. And the reality is, it’s just too many games.”
Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle added his voice to the conversation, agreeing with Kerr’s premise while highlighting a specific scheduling trade-off that has gone largely unnoticed. “When the effort was made to eliminate back-to-backs, in order to have the space to do that, you needed to shorten training camp,” Carlisle said.
“That extra week to build a base in terms of strength, I’ve always wondered if the effort to have less back-to-backs was really worth it. The nature of the game has changed significantly. Steve is right on point with that.”
The financial reality of shortening the schedule remains the biggest obstacle. Fewer games mean less revenue for everyone involved, and there is no known momentum within the league toward making that change. But the 65-game rule is a narrower, more targeted fix, and the cases of both Green and Cunningham give Kerr’s argument exactly the kind of concrete examples that are hard to argue against.
