The

The Welcome back to nothing personal.

We've got an amazing thing happening in a National Basketball Association where the four best players in the league are at risk of not being recognized as being the best players in the league.

It's something that we knew could happen when Adam Silver said, we know how to get a big TV deal.

We know how to deal with load management. Let's make sure that everybody plays at least 65 out of 81 games.

That number was arrived at, according to Adam Silver, through great analysis, discussion, and guessing.

Well, here we are in a season where SGA, Luca, Wembeyanama, and Yokic are the top four odds-on, according to Draft Kings, MVP winners, and all four of them are in danger of not

playing enough games to actually win the MVP. SGA, if he misses six more games, he's done.

Luca, five, Wembañama, four, and Yokic, one more.

The reason that the NBA is hoping against hope that SGA plays the majority of the remaining

games for the Thunder and is eligible for MVP,

is that they don't want to have to explain why Cade Cunningham is the league MVP.

Cade Cunningham is a phenomenal player on a team that could win a title. He's the best player on a title potential

championship team. He's not the MVP of the league. He's not the best player in basketball,

and it's not relatively close. Kate Cunningham becomes the MVP favorite and the presumptive winner if the people above him

do not qualify.

And that leaves the NBA in a bit of a quandary.

Because years from now, when I go back, and this is true of individual awards and team accomplishments,

when people look at Greg Popovich and they count the number of titles, the San Antonio Spurs

won, they don't say, well, in 1999 Patrick Ewing didn't play for the Knicks when the Spurs won.

There are example after example of teams that win against not the best players of the opposing team because of injuries.

Do you go back when you think about that team and you see the list of titles they've won?

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