Yeah, that’s a good question. I found this on the interwebs….
To be eligible for Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, Most Improved Player or the All-NBA and All-Defensive teams, players must either play 20-plus minutes in at least 65 regular-season games or play at least 62 games, suffer a season-ending injury and play a majority of his team's games prior to that.
Gotta play in them.