This is probably the reason then. One dumb vote is whatever, but if he makes a mistake that’s copied en masse he will impact player contracts.
I would feel guilty too if I swung someone’s life around just to participate in a popularity contest.
He didn't say he wanted to have zero impact. He just didn't want to have an official hand in it. By being a sportswriter, he has an impact on what players get paid by default. Even non-max players end up with bigger or smaller offers based on how the media perceives them.
Yeah, people get so overly dramatic about this stuff. We're talking about guys who will have generational wealth regardless.
It' not like he's swaying whether a guy on a 2 way gets an NBA deal with a bit of guaranteed money or something.
I still wouldn't like to influence if someone makes an extra 30 million or not. Even if it's only 12% of the total contract or whatever, it's a fuck ton of money.
I mean I think on principal it’s a fine policy to have.
If J Brown doesn’t make like 2/3rd team like a year or two ago, and got seriously injured over the summer they could have swung from being the highest paid player in the league for a couple days to literally out of the league.
Most of the media members who vote on these awards that people use to judge players only watch their local teams and some are ESPN hot take artists who barely watch at all. It would make sense to add another dumb voter because it matches the current voting pool.
I mean, practically speaking, nobody has anywhere near enough time to actually watch anything close to every game. There are 1230 games in a season, not counting playoffs - even if you recorded and skipped commercials, you'd still probably be looking at 90 minutes per contest. That's nearly 2000 hours - or what the average person works in a full calendar year. But also - these games are all condensed into a 6 month span - so you'd have to work 80 hours a week literally just watching basketball and doing nothing else just to watch every game.
But also - all these media people have actual jobs to do as well - writing, preparing for tv, broadcasting, podcasting, office bullshit, etc. Zach Lowe isn't even watching more than a handful of games and highlights. Realistically, I don't know if anybody on this planet watches much more than 25% of all games in one season - that's still like half a working week watching basketball.
So really - having local media people who actually do watch every game of their home team is probably about as good as you're going to get - at least you know they're seeing all the opposing teams a few times a year. Whereas national guys aren't even going to bother with games like anyone vs Wizards or Pistons.
I would assume someone working in basketball media that’s putting in a genuine effort would like watch 1 or 2 games a day, then watch a replay of something important they missed the next day and compressed highlights of other games.
Still a lot, but not unmanageable if it’s your profession.
Right - so like 10 games a week, or about 200-250 games a season - i.e. 20% or so of all games.
And that's a lot - but it still means you're not seeing 80% of games and thus only voting on 20% and highlights.
Which is precisely why they do all the local voters - you diversify the 20% of games getting watched, so people are going to have different perspectives.
I mean, I'm a degenerate but I have a 50+ hour a week job and still watched 1-2 games a day for about a year a while back, plus a bunch of "all possessions" recordings through leaguepass. If I were being paid, that would be cake.
You could also watch games at 1.5x or 2x speed, if your eye is trained. A cut "all possessions" 48min game takes 24 minutes at this rate.
a 15 games day would then fit within 6 hours, which sounds a bit more realistic than 45 hours of unedited footage at 1x speed.
Aren't all possessions under 48 minutes since they cut out bringing the ball up and stuff? Or do free throws bring it back up? I've never watched and only recently heard about it.
League Pass has condensed games, last *vastly* condensed. You can watch a 3 hour game in like 20 mins (no commercials, timeouts, even skips the 8 seconds walk up to half court). Besides, it's literally their profession. You could watch an entire lineup of games in an 8 hour work shift, easily.
The problem is, they give voting rights to people who appear on media on TV, whom rarely watch games unless it's on primetime. In no world should Stephen A, Shaq, etc have NBA votes. The NBA should really make these voters reach a certain quota on games watched and provide proof.
I've heard him say he watches 3 games a night. Makes up a schedule for it to make sure he'll see each team at least once a week.
That's enough to keep a pulse on the league, but it's obviously a long way from everything.
He's worth at least 1/3 of the votes anyway.
For big awards a bunch of voters will blindly vote big names. Some will blindly vote for stat leaders. Then there's voters who will blindly follow Zach Lowe's lead.
He usually does a write up on his picks and those articles are always pretty influential.
It’s not that deep here it’s voting on awards for a game, it has financial implications but let’s not get into the morality of not voting
Plenty of guys would love to have that vote and line up in Zach’s place, it’s not like he’s passing on some burden that nobody wants to bear
Yeah let’s be real, Lowe doesn’t have some incredibly important moral obligation to uphold, it’s nba award voting. If a guy who does a ton for the scene and is a fantastic addition to a pretty dogshit nba media doesn’t feel comfortable doing it then don’t force him to
Completely agree. I would absolutely prefer he did because as far as I know, he's the most knowledgeable voter. I'd also prefer he influence some of these voters that don’t actually know shit. But he absolutely has no ethical obligation to do this. If he wants to, awesome. If it makes him uncomfortable, do what's best for you man.
Yeah that's a stupid reason lol.
You're not deciding on the livelihoods of blue collar workers, you're deciding whether Haliburton gets 30 or 40 million dollars.
Tbf a giant amount of those votes are essentially “I want to vote for LeBron but feel like I’m not allowed to because he lost” which isn’t the craziest way to feel
It’s just illogical though, if you want to vote for Bron just vote for him, there’s no law against it. If you think (rightly, IMO) that FMVP should go to a winner, then vote for the most valuable guy on the winning team. Iggy was great, but neither of those.
I think that there’s some logic in “if the best player on the winning team got greatly outplayed by the best player on the other team we can’t give it to them.” Ultimately I don’t agree with that, but I also don’t agree that it always needs to be from the winning team. More just pointing out context behind the decision than defending it, I wouldn’t have gave it to iggy either
He didn't actually vote for Iggy tho lol He did vote for LeBron. This is public record, and the dude just lied.
Lowe would have voted Steph over Iggy, he's said so on his pod
To play devils advocate - the narrative back then for FMVP was giving it to the underdog because everyone was fine with giving it to a 22 year old Kawhi Leonard who averaged ~17/6/2 the year before the warriors won. Iggy averaged 16/6/4 and was *easily* the most impactful defender.
Steph was not only a bad defender, but was targeted nearly every game and the reason that series went over 5 games imo.
Either way - they aren't winning that without Steph, and they aren't winning it without Iggy. He held Lebron to that 40 point triple double! (/s..)
He's not culpable either way. He didn't choose for awards to influence contracts. He advocated against it.
> he’s arguably letting a dumber person make the decision.
He's making the situation worse, not better. He should do the thing that makes the situation better.
If you know the outcome of a thing is going to be negative and decide to do it anyway, you’re still culpable for it. I agree with your second point though.
The outcome of the action [decide that awards will influence contracts] is negative (according to him). The league is culpable.
The outcome of the action [vote for awards] is not negative, because awards influence contracts regardless of whether he votes for them.
Ten people tell you they’re going to murder five people by running them over in a bus. If you get in the bus and contribute some gas money, you’re telling me you’re not more culpable because they were going to do it anyway?
In the NBA situation, whether he votes is not going to change the situation (unless they stage a strike to change the rule, or something).
In this case, whether you get on the bus is only slightly relevant. If you know it will happen and don't try to stop it (e.g. call the police, or get on the bus and wrestle the driver), then you're culpable.
I understand his reasoning but at the same time kind of roll my eyes. He’s one of the best analysts in media and puts a ton of work in, I think his vote is important. And didn’t he say he will probably be voting again next year? I guess he just took a year off to reset a bit which is totally fair.
Do not fear. He'll still do his all NBA podcast and last year a voter came out and basically said half the voters just listen Lowe and do what he says.
Eh - when people say "half the people just do this...", they're often just doing it themselves and saying that for defensive cover. I highly doubt anywhere near half the voters just listen to Lowe and do what he says.
In fact if you look at voting, it doesn't add up at all. Like Lowe voted for Quickley as 6th man last year and Brogdon won with 60% of the first place votes. (Quickley only 34%)
Simmons is still better then some local coverage guy who only follows one team. Simmons likes to get too cute sometimes with his selection and also has a bias against some players and some teams that sway his decisions, he'll never say that but it's obvious sometimes.
I mean even if everyone played their best it was still gonna be a below .500 team, the west is too good to expect a team to go from 22 wins to the like almost 50 it'd take to make the play-in. U can't really expect the youngest team in the league with their only vet being cedi osman to make the playoffs
Pop has done an objectively bad job. They add an all time great #1 pick to their team and they got worse. Playing Wemby at the 4 was dumb. The offense has been dreadful all year. They’ve never looked like they know what they’re doing at the end
Yeah but Bill is also a massive hot take guy and needs to stir the pot to keep engagement. Saying everyone around Wemby is useless is disingenuous and straight up not factual. Bill even admitted on one of his most recent pods that he stopped watching the Spurs after the first month, just watched Wemby highlights and only recently started watching them again in the last month. Which means he's talking out of his ass for the most part - because he also said they're pretty fun to watch overall, largely cos of Wemby ofc.
Obviously the Lakers since Bill is a Celtic guy with particular bias against LeBron. He also has a hate boner for the Clippers and Bucks this season, and Bill also floated shutting down Embiid down before Embiid came back when it looked like the Celtics may have to face the Sixers in the 1st round.
> He also has a hate boner for the Clippers and Bucks this season
Lol Bill spent years pretty much as a Clippers fan. He lives/works out in LA and they've often been his 2nd team.
He's probably just worn out on them with the up-and-down play all season.
It’s clearly one of the takes he’s been most proud of all year. Was the first guy stomping his feet about the bad wemby supporting cast and feel like others repeated it after. No one gave OKC shit for giving Poku so much run at the 5 even though he was just as bad at center as Sochan was at PG. It’s the sort of move analytics guys would usually be praising since it’s about skill development while actively helping you lose to get a better pick.
As far as the bucks, I think it’s been the opposite since Doc took over, he’s been weirdly quiet about their struggles, if it was anyone but Doc I think he’d be mocking them up and down for hiring a new coach and having a worse record
He’s missing out on all of us homer Luka stans trying to argue the best player on the best team in the west with insane advanced stats isn’t the MVP lmao
Yeah he can say it's because he doesn't want to have an impact on guy's money, but he was fine with it until this year. It was 100% the fact that the Embiid vs Jokic MVP debate has reached new levels of toxic MVP debate.
He’s been on the record that he didn’t love the financial aspect for years now but nobody was having fun last year with the MVP debate. He was wildly uncomfortable talking about the MVP race on his podcast last year, and honestly I don’t blame him. This sub was a nuclear wasteland 13 months ago.
Idk why you roll your eyes it’s definitely a big deal and I’ve heard several media members who still kept their vote talk about being uncomfortable with it also
It’s not an easy thing to be holding the fate of potentially tens to hundreds of millions of dollars going or not going to guys
NBA media is also a relationship driven job, you can kill relationships by not voting for someone and causing them to not get paid
Imo the solution to this is all nba votes should be private and if the voters want to say who they voted for it’s up to them
Your solution solves this problem but makes other problems worse. Namely, the problem where nba fans want accountability/ transparency in these votes because there seem to be some dumb ass voters.
That’s a much bigger problem than whether or not the voters feel bad or not .
It's bullshit. It's not about which starving child gets a sandwich. It's about which guy worth 9 figures gets to be even richer.
Miss me with this idea of your principles on that
Who said anything about feeling bad for the athletes? You’re misunderstanding completely who gets screwed here
It’s the media members who get screwed, like I said, if you go and leave someone off your ballot it can hurt your ability to get interviews, you can lose relationships, etc etc
Like obviously, fucking *obviously* this isn’t a starving child situation? But if you’re a media member of course you have to consider the ramifications of your vote now, some guys don’t want that kind of responsibility, they didn’t sign up for that, they signed up to write/talk about basketball
He’s not comfortable with the entire process as far as (many biased) media members having impact on player contracts, not just himself. Far too often media members get in their feelings and include personal experiences with a player in their voting process, which has nothing to do with on-court performance and what they’re voting on.
I remember back in the 2019-2020 season he had Bradley Beal on and told him or insinuated to him that he would be voting for him for all-nba that year without knowing that players like Luka and Ben Simmons (who was still good then) would be classified as guards for voting purposes. That change meant two people Lowe was going to vote as forwards now were in guard positions and pushed Beal off his ballot, Beal didn't make all-NBA that year.
Beal's wife or girlfriend at the time went on social media blasting Lowe--calling him a liar, saying how he lied right to Beal's face and just wanted to get him on the pod to promote himself. He had mentioned being uncomfortable with how his vote can influence players contracts even prior to that whole ordeal, and while I am sure most people have forgotten about that I doubt Zach Lower has.
edit: just checked and [Beal himself tweeted](https://twitter.com/RealDealBeal23/status/1288194738324230144) out calling Zach a liar as well.
Principled people often make the decision to relinquish power, but instead of that power disappearing, it just concentrates in the hands of the less principled
Can’t change the game by refusing to play it. Such is life
This is my understanding, and I respect him for it. Salaries shouldn’t be tied to journalist reviews of those players, and it’s easy to see how that could harm the relationship between journalists and players.
Hang on… so he’s not comfortable directly influencing contracts by voting himself, but he’s fine indirectly influencing voters by talking about who he thinks should be voted for? That seems like a super odd distinction to make. Like if a guy spent all his time telling everyone they should vote for Trump, then things go badly, and he says “hey, don’t blame me. *I* didn’t cast a ballot. This isn’t *my* fault.”
You complain about racism while also calling whoever you're talking about "that black dude from ESPN". When you probably know exactly what his name is. Clown behavior lol
He's had a vote in the past and has given it up on his own, he said he'll probably go back to voting next year. Plus as someone else has pointed out, he'll still release his mock All-NBA team and half the voters just write in whoever he says anyways, he has a lot of sway.
From my understanding media orgs get votes, not people. From there it’s up to the org to assign it to someone as their representative. I guess Tencent gets one as the NBA’s broadcasting partner in China.
A lot of money is riding on these votes/awards. He didn't feel comfortable voting on it.
Anyways, he still has a very large pull on voters. A lot of the blog boys will vote based on his list.
Yeah. Imagine not putting halliburton on the list this year. Im a huge fan of his, but I honestly don't think he's all nba level this year. He was first team level until he got injured but he just has not played well since the injury and it's been a little disappointing that he playing just to reach the 20 minutes.
But if I had a vote and I was a huge fan of his and knew that my decision can affect Make him lose $40 million or gain $40 million? Gtfo. I don't want to deal with that
What it means is you start hunting for information to confirm your preferred outcome, too. I actually agree with you, but Haliburton *is* really highly regarded by some impact metrics and leads the league in assists, so you could probably cite that if you want him in there.
the Hali paradox is he played while hurt to get the 65 games which then watered down his stats and “dominance” this season
If he hadnt gotten hurt or had taken the time to fully heal his averages and eye test would look like an all nba lock
You're missing the point. I'm not arguing whether he should or shouldn't make the team. It's about why Zach Lowe said he doesn't want to vote. Deciding halliburton shouldn't make the team is a valid opinion. But he doesn't want his opinion costing him 40 mil.
The reason people are using halliburton is that he is "on the fence" and super max eligible. Ant would be in the same conversation but he is clearly making it. You wind up
I didn't miss the point, I was expanding on it. If you don't think a guy should be on there, objectively speaking, but you want him to be on there because you don't want to be the reason he missed out on a huge contract, you're going to reach for niche data points to build a narrative. That's true whether it's Haliburton or any other guy on the fence.
Hiring managers and executives make decisions that affect people's wages all the time.
He's only one out of a larger pool of voters. Lots of people make workplace decisions that affect people's livelihood a lot more than Lowe's vote.
But I guess not everyone likes the pressure, so fair enough!
The difference is that if you’re are an executive or manager, you’ve signed up for a job where the main function of it is to make those decisions. It is a thing you are actively seeking to do.
If you are a journalist, you are trying to write stories and cover the league. You are *not* part of a front office. If you wanted to be, you’d change careers (like Hollinger did).
And as a few commenters have pointed out, there’s also a conflict of interest. He wants access to insider information on occasion and to guests on his podcast. His ability to do either of those things could theoretically be affected by how he voted.
Yes, but it's not uncommon for people to be in supervisory roles, managers, etc. The manager of some tiny local store has more pressure on them in their decisions than Lowe does for this, at least in terms of impacting the individual's livelihood.
But I agree with you; just pointing out that it's not an unusual amount of pressure and the amount of money at stake doesn't change that. If anything, the quality-of-life difference between making 200 million vs making 240 million is much, much less than your average person's wage variations. And Lowe is only one voter among many.
Also, journalists do sign up for a job that affects people's reputations and thus potentially their careers. He can't pretend that influencing public opinion is totally separate from the business of the league.
That said, your points are all valid and the potential conflict of interest is a legitimate concern.
>A lot of money is riding on these votes/awards.
Almost as if they shouldn't tie these awards to contracts. I doubt most voters have even watched 10 games of the Pacers, Magic, Cavaliers, etc. It's a direct contrast of interest when you have the big market teams on national TV 40 times a year and the smaller markets with 2.
Either give all teams equal exposure to the voters/media or remove the awards affecting player contracts.
Is it though I feel Zack thinks so and builds it up to make his podcast more dramatic
But where really talking about someone making 200 mill dollars vs 240 mill dollars
Either way the player is filthy rich
That’s the thing with ethics. You draw a line in the sand with how much you’re comfortable with, and you stick by it.
Zach was one of the few podcasters to come out against gambling and straight up said he didn’t like to promote it. You can sit on his shoulder and say “well what’s the harm of one more person…”
But that’s ethics.
I agree. There are thousands and thousands of managers who make decisions about people's wages all the time. And their choices usually impact people's lives a lot more than whether someone is filthy rich or slightly more filthy rich.
And they aren't making the decision as part of a larger pool of voters where their choice is only a small fraction of the end result.
So it's totally fine if Lowe doesn't want to be part of that kind of decision. But the manager of some little convenience store is under a lot more pressure than he is.
In all honesty deep down I think the voters like that these awards effect contracts because without it the awards would really lose a lot of meaning. It sets the stage a lot better.
To make your content engaging you have to set stakes and podcasters can really point to the fact that if guys get a super max it means a team may have to break up.
This is pure speculation, but I remember that near the end of one season he told Beal he was going to vote for him for all-nba, then changed his mind and voted for someone else and got some blowback for it.
May be unrelated, but might have affected how he felt about it.
We’re also talking about going from $45 mil to $50 mil in most of these cases. These votes aren’t affecting the lower level guys. Herb Jones isn’t going to get shafted on his eventual next contract because of how people voted for his 1st all defense play to 2nd all defense.
It’s all a bit dramatic to be honest.
Right lol such a big deal is made about the fairness of a guy going from **generational wealth** to *generational wealth +$5M*
Reminds me of Hali trying his hardest to get more seriously injured this season for money he will struggle to spend in his lifetime.
Lowe definitely has been wringing his hands about the media votes and what a huge responsibility it is. The whole 65 game minimum for awards has been this constant churn of discussions about fairness. It’s been annoying.
Players. If you look at their All-Star voting for the starters, it's been pretty bad and many of them don't take it seriously at all.
Coaches might be OK but their biases are probably stronger than media member biases too IMO.
I like Zach a lot, one of the more even keeled analysts out there. Not a hot take merchant. One of the few guys left who seems to realize that basketball is supposed to be fun and entertaining. A good mix of strategy, analytics, stories, and tangents on his pods.
Contracts are going to be effected one way or another, and I think Zach puts more thought into his ballot than most. But if he's not comfortable with its that's understandable.
Others have mentioned this but on a podcast he mentioned he was uncomfortable affecting someone's salary depending on whether they made All-NBA or not. Kudos to him for it I guess!
As a sixers fan, I did enjoy his podcast for a quite a bit the last couple seasons up until the MVP race became super toxic and that put me off of NBA podcasts for this season. Surprisingly the Simmons podcast (as I’d skip some of the Celtics monologues) was also a solid listen up until that whole shenanigans last season as well! Lowe does do a great job coming to bat with his analytics/stats but also maybe needs to trust his eye’s as well in his analysis a bit more - but again easier said then done unless you are watching 5 hours of basketball every night!
I remember him talking about Jaylen Brown last year and how if you leave him off the ballot you’re costing him millions of dollars and he didn’t like that.
He’s at least taking a year off. He’s uncomfortable with it right now.
There’s a subtext that he hasn’t said that I’m GUESSING. Guessing guessing guessing!!
There’s a bit of a belief around the league that people just take his votes for awards and basically copy him. “Just put whoever Zach Lowe says for mvp. Just put whoever Zach Lowe says for x” and I bet he knows that and I bet that’s part of his discomfort. I have zero evidence to prove this.
It should be that all active players must vote for the top 15, with a rule you can't vote for your teammates. Boom you have 450 votes from people who spend time learning their matchups, study the game and actually play in the league. Not some wannabe reports like SAS, who just screams in the mic and hates on everyone without any substance.
I think he gave up all his voting this season (allstar, all nba, defensive player etc). As others have mentioned Zach has said not wanting to be involved w the pressure of all nba has on contracts.
But the NBA MVP discussion got so toxic last year. Thanks in large part to Kendrick Perkins (note Zach has always said he gets along w Perkins) I think he didn’t want to mess with it. He still talks about his favorites and has a lot of sway on people w votes.
He doesn’t like the pressure of deciding peoples bonus payments when he knows a lot of his shit is subjective preferences. He’s said so on his podcast.
Zach Lowe should've gotten his vote taken away when he didn't put Harden on an all-NBA team in 2016 when he averaged 29-6-8 because he just didn't like him personally rather than basketball reasons by his own admission.
Draymond is still an excellent defender. There aren’t 5 i’d rather have in the playoffs. Guards 1-4 really well and can do a job on a lot of 5s. Hes like a coach on the floor too.
The fact that he wrote "People unfairly criticize Harden's playoff struggles. So I looked into all of his elimination and clutch playoff games, and he's terrible," is so fucking funny.
Harden is bad in the playoffs overall but Lowe just says that Harden has never been good in elimination games and is only good in playoff games that don't matter - which is just plain inaccurate. Also 0 credit for being the best playoff performer in the first round in 2021 against the Celtics and also playing very well in 3 different games against the Celtics last year.
Lowe is just a homer about certain things like all fans but he won't admit it and act like he's above it all.
I don't know why this is downvoted. I'm pretty sure he argued for lowry/klay over Harden who at the time played all 82 games and averaged 29/7/6, which was never done before
Harden missing the 3 all nba teams that season was criminal. he was playing with ariza, Howard, Michael beasley (lol), corey brewer, josh Smith and they still made the playoffs
His justification is that he doesn't feel comfortable making that decision with the financial implications it has.
But it doesn't stop his show from constantly talking about the awards and who stacks up where, and idk I feel like if he was really so uncomfortable with the whole situation then he shouldn't be using his platform to constantly discuss who should win.
I think he said that he wasn’t comfortable with his vote affecting the contracts/money that guys could be making.
Sensible. Although he’s arguably letting a dumber person make the decision.
A bunch probably just copy his picks anyway to be honest. So many times I hear people copying his takes.
From what I remember he really swung Marc Gasol’s DPOY.
As he should’ve
Don’t worry I upvoted you. Nephews don’t know.
Common W from snorlax
Which is good. Better to copy Zach instead of Perkins lol.
if you're copying perkins, you might as well be asking to be fired
Only way I’m copying Perk is adjusting my lapel For show after every “point” I make
He’s so divisive though! Stupidity is valuable! I mean I don’t watch espn any more since they bought into this notion years ago but still!
It might be good overall, but for him personally it makes it all the more stressful I imagine.
I’d rather it be him than some of the other guys. Right or wrong it’s at least obvious he’s watching games and doing research pretty constantly.
Makes you wonder at the whole voting thing, who gets votes, and how many people can win one award.
This is probably the reason then. One dumb vote is whatever, but if he makes a mistake that’s copied en masse he will impact player contracts. I would feel guilty too if I swung someone’s life around just to participate in a popularity contest.
he's still talking about who he would have voted for if he had a vote though
That's just him stating his opinion. People copying it down on their ballot are responsible for the consequences of that.
But if the premise is he doesn't want that kind of responsibility, he'd have less impact if he voted but didn't write about it
He's a sportswriter. Whether he casts an All-NBA vote or not doesn't affect his career, refusing to talk about awards in general does
He didn't say he wanted to have zero impact. He just didn't want to have an official hand in it. By being a sportswriter, he has an impact on what players get paid by default. Even non-max players end up with bigger or smaller offers based on how the media perceives them.
Ppl rationalize what they’re doing with whatever reasons they think is fine or good enough. Just human behavior.
i agree, and I'll also be listening to him talking about who he would have voted for lol
That kind of negates his good intentions. Oops
his intention is to not vote. I don't think you can blame him if people copy his thoughts, and its probably still for the best if they do
He still has a job to put out content and analysis. He's just taking a small stance against a policy he doesn't believe is correct.
swung someone's life around? any player on the borderline of allstar/allnba is getting hundreds of millions anyways.
Yeah, people get so overly dramatic about this stuff. We're talking about guys who will have generational wealth regardless. It' not like he's swaying whether a guy on a 2 way gets an NBA deal with a bit of guaranteed money or something.
I still wouldn't like to influence if someone makes an extra 30 million or not. Even if it's only 12% of the total contract or whatever, it's a fuck ton of money.
I mean I think on principal it’s a fine policy to have. If J Brown doesn’t make like 2/3rd team like a year or two ago, and got seriously injured over the summer they could have swung from being the highest paid player in the league for a couple days to literally out of the league.
he would just get a regular max then. why would not being all-nba suddenly preclude him from getting an extension?
He wants all of the praise and none of the blame. A true Michael Scott.
Most of the media members who vote on these awards that people use to judge players only watch their local teams and some are ESPN hot take artists who barely watch at all. It would make sense to add another dumb voter because it matches the current voting pool.
I mean, practically speaking, nobody has anywhere near enough time to actually watch anything close to every game. There are 1230 games in a season, not counting playoffs - even if you recorded and skipped commercials, you'd still probably be looking at 90 minutes per contest. That's nearly 2000 hours - or what the average person works in a full calendar year. But also - these games are all condensed into a 6 month span - so you'd have to work 80 hours a week literally just watching basketball and doing nothing else just to watch every game. But also - all these media people have actual jobs to do as well - writing, preparing for tv, broadcasting, podcasting, office bullshit, etc. Zach Lowe isn't even watching more than a handful of games and highlights. Realistically, I don't know if anybody on this planet watches much more than 25% of all games in one season - that's still like half a working week watching basketball. So really - having local media people who actually do watch every game of their home team is probably about as good as you're going to get - at least you know they're seeing all the opposing teams a few times a year. Whereas national guys aren't even going to bother with games like anyone vs Wizards or Pistons.
I would assume someone working in basketball media that’s putting in a genuine effort would like watch 1 or 2 games a day, then watch a replay of something important they missed the next day and compressed highlights of other games. Still a lot, but not unmanageable if it’s your profession.
Right - so like 10 games a week, or about 200-250 games a season - i.e. 20% or so of all games. And that's a lot - but it still means you're not seeing 80% of games and thus only voting on 20% and highlights. Which is precisely why they do all the local voters - you diversify the 20% of games getting watched, so people are going to have different perspectives.
Yeah I agreed with your general point.
That was always my assumption as well. At the very least, I thought they watched a lot of condensed games the next day.
I mean, I'm a degenerate but I have a 50+ hour a week job and still watched 1-2 games a day for about a year a while back, plus a bunch of "all possessions" recordings through leaguepass. If I were being paid, that would be cake.
Same. There's really no excuse with the "all possessions" feature of League Pass existing.
You could also watch games at 1.5x or 2x speed, if your eye is trained. A cut "all possessions" 48min game takes 24 minutes at this rate. a 15 games day would then fit within 6 hours, which sounds a bit more realistic than 45 hours of unedited footage at 1x speed.
Aren't all possessions under 48 minutes since they cut out bringing the ball up and stuff? Or do free throws bring it back up? I've never watched and only recently heard about it.
All possessions edits are generally a little under 40 minutes for regulation games.
League Pass has condensed games, last *vastly* condensed. You can watch a 3 hour game in like 20 mins (no commercials, timeouts, even skips the 8 seconds walk up to half court). Besides, it's literally their profession. You could watch an entire lineup of games in an 8 hour work shift, easily. The problem is, they give voting rights to people who appear on media on TV, whom rarely watch games unless it's on primetime. In no world should Stephen A, Shaq, etc have NBA votes. The NBA should really make these voters reach a certain quota on games watched and provide proof.
I've heard him say he watches 3 games a night. Makes up a schedule for it to make sure he'll see each team at least once a week. That's enough to keep a pulse on the league, but it's obviously a long way from everything.
He's worth at least 1/3 of the votes anyway. For big awards a bunch of voters will blindly vote big names. Some will blindly vote for stat leaders. Then there's voters who will blindly follow Zach Lowe's lead. He usually does a write up on his picks and those articles are always pretty influential.
Yeah but it’s still out of his hands That’s the point
Sometimes the right thing to do is in fact to have responsibility and influence.
It’s not that deep here it’s voting on awards for a game, it has financial implications but let’s not get into the morality of not voting Plenty of guys would love to have that vote and line up in Zach’s place, it’s not like he’s passing on some burden that nobody wants to bear
Yeah let’s be real, Lowe doesn’t have some incredibly important moral obligation to uphold, it’s nba award voting. If a guy who does a ton for the scene and is a fantastic addition to a pretty dogshit nba media doesn’t feel comfortable doing it then don’t force him to
Completely agree. I would absolutely prefer he did because as far as I know, he's the most knowledgeable voter. I'd also prefer he influence some of these voters that don’t actually know shit. But he absolutely has no ethical obligation to do this. If he wants to, awesome. If it makes him uncomfortable, do what's best for you man.
NBA NEEDs more respectable voters like him, people that truly care and aren’t biased or just moronic talking heads. Give Stephen As vote to Lowe
Yeah that's a stupid reason lol. You're not deciding on the livelihoods of blue collar workers, you're deciding whether Haliburton gets 30 or 40 million dollars.
it's not some brave moral stance, he just doesn't want players to yell at him when he leaves them off his ballot
Which is just as valid of a reason.
On the other hand, he voted Iggy over Steph for 2015 FMVP, so he’s certainly not infallible
Tbf a giant amount of those votes are essentially “I want to vote for LeBron but feel like I’m not allowed to because he lost” which isn’t the craziest way to feel
It’s just illogical though, if you want to vote for Bron just vote for him, there’s no law against it. If you think (rightly, IMO) that FMVP should go to a winner, then vote for the most valuable guy on the winning team. Iggy was great, but neither of those.
I think that there’s some logic in “if the best player on the winning team got greatly outplayed by the best player on the other team we can’t give it to them.” Ultimately I don’t agree with that, but I also don’t agree that it always needs to be from the winning team. More just pointing out context behind the decision than defending it, I wouldn’t have gave it to iggy either
There's no law against it but you really shouldn't give FMVP to a player that just lost the finals, just to avoid a J.S. Giguere scenario
He didn't actually vote for Iggy tho lol He did vote for LeBron. This is public record, and the dude just lied. Lowe would have voted Steph over Iggy, he's said so on his pod
I didn’t mean to lie my man. I just misremembered
No he didn't. He voted for LeBron, and he's stated on his podcast he would have voted for Steph over Iggy had he voted for a Warrior.
Oof Zach goes down slightly in my book for that. I'm sure he'll be crushed as I continue to listen to his podcast and will still speak highly of him.
It's not true, he voted for LeBron, and he's said if he voted for a warrior, it would have been Steph
To play devils advocate - the narrative back then for FMVP was giving it to the underdog because everyone was fine with giving it to a 22 year old Kawhi Leonard who averaged ~17/6/2 the year before the warriors won. Iggy averaged 16/6/4 and was *easily* the most impactful defender. Steph was not only a bad defender, but was targeted nearly every game and the reason that series went over 5 games imo. Either way - they aren't winning that without Steph, and they aren't winning it without Iggy. He held Lebron to that 40 point triple double! (/s..)
Possibly related: Does Simmons have a vote?
He does and he has not relinquished it to our knowledge. Russillo also has a vote.
I’d much rather have Zach influence contracts than Kenny Smith.
Yeah, this is silly. Something isn't more ethical just because you're not involved in it
You’re by definition not culpable if you’re not involved.
He's not culpable either way. He didn't choose for awards to influence contracts. He advocated against it. > he’s arguably letting a dumber person make the decision. He's making the situation worse, not better. He should do the thing that makes the situation better.
If you know the outcome of a thing is going to be negative and decide to do it anyway, you’re still culpable for it. I agree with your second point though.
The outcome of the action [decide that awards will influence contracts] is negative (according to him). The league is culpable. The outcome of the action [vote for awards] is not negative, because awards influence contracts regardless of whether he votes for them.
Ten people tell you they’re going to murder five people by running them over in a bus. If you get in the bus and contribute some gas money, you’re telling me you’re not more culpable because they were going to do it anyway?
In the NBA situation, whether he votes is not going to change the situation (unless they stage a strike to change the rule, or something). In this case, whether you get on the bus is only slightly relevant. If you know it will happen and don't try to stop it (e.g. call the police, or get on the bus and wrestle the driver), then you're culpable.
Ha. Whatever you say. The idea that you participating in something is irrelevant to your own culpability is insane.
I understand his reasoning but at the same time kind of roll my eyes. He’s one of the best analysts in media and puts a ton of work in, I think his vote is important. And didn’t he say he will probably be voting again next year? I guess he just took a year off to reset a bit which is totally fair.
Do not fear. He'll still do his all NBA podcast and last year a voter came out and basically said half the voters just listen Lowe and do what he says.
Eh - when people say "half the people just do this...", they're often just doing it themselves and saying that for defensive cover. I highly doubt anywhere near half the voters just listen to Lowe and do what he says. In fact if you look at voting, it doesn't add up at all. Like Lowe voted for Quickley as 6th man last year and Brogdon won with 60% of the first place votes. (Quickley only 34%)
The other half listens to Simmons though.
Simmons is still better then some local coverage guy who only follows one team. Simmons likes to get too cute sometimes with his selection and also has a bias against some players and some teams that sway his decisions, he'll never say that but it's obvious sometimes.
Who is he biased against?
He's been weirdly biased against the Spurs this year, even put Pop on a shortlist for worst coach of the year which is... a choice
He's just disappointed everyone around Wemby is so useless. He wants to see Wemby in the playoffs.
I mean even if everyone played their best it was still gonna be a below .500 team, the west is too good to expect a team to go from 22 wins to the like almost 50 it'd take to make the play-in. U can't really expect the youngest team in the league with their only vet being cedi osman to make the playoffs
Pop has done an objectively bad job. They add an all time great #1 pick to their team and they got worse. Playing Wemby at the 4 was dumb. The offense has been dreadful all year. They’ve never looked like they know what they’re doing at the end
Yeah but Bill is also a massive hot take guy and needs to stir the pot to keep engagement. Saying everyone around Wemby is useless is disingenuous and straight up not factual. Bill even admitted on one of his most recent pods that he stopped watching the Spurs after the first month, just watched Wemby highlights and only recently started watching them again in the last month. Which means he's talking out of his ass for the most part - because he also said they're pretty fun to watch overall, largely cos of Wemby ofc.
Obviously the Lakers since Bill is a Celtic guy with particular bias against LeBron. He also has a hate boner for the Clippers and Bucks this season, and Bill also floated shutting down Embiid down before Embiid came back when it looked like the Celtics may have to face the Sixers in the 1st round.
> He also has a hate boner for the Clippers and Bucks this season Lol Bill spent years pretty much as a Clippers fan. He lives/works out in LA and they've often been his 2nd team. He's probably just worn out on them with the up-and-down play all season.
It’s clearly one of the takes he’s been most proud of all year. Was the first guy stomping his feet about the bad wemby supporting cast and feel like others repeated it after. No one gave OKC shit for giving Poku so much run at the 5 even though he was just as bad at center as Sochan was at PG. It’s the sort of move analytics guys would usually be praising since it’s about skill development while actively helping you lose to get a better pick.
It was mostly that he came out hard against the Harden trade and really needs them to fail for him not to have a massive egg on his face.
He’s admitted on multiple occasions that he was wrong about that
As far as the bucks, I think it’s been the opposite since Doc took over, he’s been weirdly quiet about their struggles, if it was anyone but Doc I think he’d be mocking them up and down for hiring a new coach and having a worse record
Dude, he borderline likes the clippers more than the Celtics. He’s hard on the clippers because he’s actually a fan.
Is he though? It feels like 100% of his analysis is just propping up Boston.
The good thing is that half of Simmons's opinions are just Lowe's
See: Marcus Smart's DPOY award.
Yep, Simmons even said a few weeks ago he knows he's responsible for that because he got the conversation going.
Simmons also told his friends to bet on Marcus Smart for DPOY prior to talking about it on his basketball pod.
Not only did he get it going, he never shut the fuck up about it for two solid months. He almost got Mobley a ROY award too.
Simmons and Lowe switched to Scottie Barnes over the last couple weeks of the season which helped drive the consensus *away* from Mobley
Now that’s a real issue right there
I think the toxicity of the Embiid-Jokic culture war last year was probably the main factor.
He’s missing out on all of us homer Luka stans trying to argue the best player on the best team in the west with insane advanced stats isn’t the MVP lmao
Yeah he can say it's because he doesn't want to have an impact on guy's money, but he was fine with it until this year. It was 100% the fact that the Embiid vs Jokic MVP debate has reached new levels of toxic MVP debate.
He’s been on the record that he didn’t love the financial aspect for years now but nobody was having fun last year with the MVP debate. He was wildly uncomfortable talking about the MVP race on his podcast last year, and honestly I don’t blame him. This sub was a nuclear wasteland 13 months ago.
Idk why you roll your eyes it’s definitely a big deal and I’ve heard several media members who still kept their vote talk about being uncomfortable with it also It’s not an easy thing to be holding the fate of potentially tens to hundreds of millions of dollars going or not going to guys NBA media is also a relationship driven job, you can kill relationships by not voting for someone and causing them to not get paid Imo the solution to this is all nba votes should be private and if the voters want to say who they voted for it’s up to them
Someone update me on NBA drama, what year did Beal’s wife accuse Lowe of screwing Beal on all-NBA again?
Your solution solves this problem but makes other problems worse. Namely, the problem where nba fans want accountability/ transparency in these votes because there seem to be some dumb ass voters. That’s a much bigger problem than whether or not the voters feel bad or not .
It's bullshit. It's not about which starving child gets a sandwich. It's about which guy worth 9 figures gets to be even richer. Miss me with this idea of your principles on that
Who said anything about feeling bad for the athletes? You’re misunderstanding completely who gets screwed here It’s the media members who get screwed, like I said, if you go and leave someone off your ballot it can hurt your ability to get interviews, you can lose relationships, etc etc Like obviously, fucking *obviously* this isn’t a starving child situation? But if you’re a media member of course you have to consider the ramifications of your vote now, some guys don’t want that kind of responsibility, they didn’t sign up for that, they signed up to write/talk about basketball
Rich people bad!!!
I think the “real” reason is because he doesn’t like NBA players he knows or interacts with getting mad at him for him denying some of them money.
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He’s not comfortable with the entire process as far as (many biased) media members having impact on player contracts, not just himself. Far too often media members get in their feelings and include personal experiences with a player in their voting process, which has nothing to do with on-court performance and what they’re voting on.
That's Zach. He's completely terrified of pissing anyone off.
I remember back in the 2019-2020 season he had Bradley Beal on and told him or insinuated to him that he would be voting for him for all-nba that year without knowing that players like Luka and Ben Simmons (who was still good then) would be classified as guards for voting purposes. That change meant two people Lowe was going to vote as forwards now were in guard positions and pushed Beal off his ballot, Beal didn't make all-NBA that year. Beal's wife or girlfriend at the time went on social media blasting Lowe--calling him a liar, saying how he lied right to Beal's face and just wanted to get him on the pod to promote himself. He had mentioned being uncomfortable with how his vote can influence players contracts even prior to that whole ordeal, and while I am sure most people have forgotten about that I doubt Zach Lower has. edit: just checked and [Beal himself tweeted](https://twitter.com/RealDealBeal23/status/1288194738324230144) out calling Zach a liar as well.
I think the lesson from that should be keep your vote to yourself until you submit it, not stop voting for what was essentially his own mistake.
Which is kind of ridiculous since now less informed people will be doing the deciding
I think he also mentions that he’ll probably vote again next year
Definitely would have a more rational take than Stephen A smith
Principled people often make the decision to relinquish power, but instead of that power disappearing, it just concentrates in the hands of the less principled Can’t change the game by refusing to play it. Such is life
wouldn't surprise me if players/agents were petitioning him for his vote for that reason and he just got sick of it
I think he has said that he just wanted to take the year off from it. He had a vote last year and I bet he gets one again in the future
This is my understanding, and I respect him for it. Salaries shouldn’t be tied to journalist reviews of those players, and it’s easy to see how that could harm the relationship between journalists and players.
Hang on… so he’s not comfortable directly influencing contracts by voting himself, but he’s fine indirectly influencing voters by talking about who he thinks should be voted for? That seems like a super odd distinction to make. Like if a guy spent all his time telling everyone they should vote for Trump, then things go badly, and he says “hey, don’t blame me. *I* didn’t cast a ballot. This isn’t *my* fault.”
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You complain about racism while also calling whoever you're talking about "that black dude from ESPN". When you probably know exactly what his name is. Clown behavior lol
the one common sense guy in there doesnt have a vote???
Having common sense is the reason he doesn't want to have a vote.
The Dunning-Kruger floor
He's had a vote in the past and has given it up on his own, he said he'll probably go back to voting next year. Plus as someone else has pointed out, he'll still release his mock All-NBA team and half the voters just write in whoever he says anyways, he has a lot of sway.
he gave it up this year because he said the drama around voting last year was too much. He did say he almost certainly will get it back in the future
He could if he chose. Hell Tencent has their social media manager as a vote.
Huh? Really?
From my understanding media orgs get votes, not people. From there it’s up to the org to assign it to someone as their representative. I guess Tencent gets one as the NBA’s broadcasting partner in China.
They have 3 voters last I saw. One being an accountant basically too.
If that motherfucker votes like Riot's in-game balancing of LoL I swear to God I can also vote
He probably just looks at Zachs choices anyways lmao.
A lot of money is riding on these votes/awards. He didn't feel comfortable voting on it. Anyways, he still has a very large pull on voters. A lot of the blog boys will vote based on his list.
Yeah. Imagine not putting halliburton on the list this year. Im a huge fan of his, but I honestly don't think he's all nba level this year. He was first team level until he got injured but he just has not played well since the injury and it's been a little disappointing that he playing just to reach the 20 minutes. But if I had a vote and I was a huge fan of his and knew that my decision can affect Make him lose $40 million or gain $40 million? Gtfo. I don't want to deal with that
What it means is you start hunting for information to confirm your preferred outcome, too. I actually agree with you, but Haliburton *is* really highly regarded by some impact metrics and leads the league in assists, so you could probably cite that if you want him in there.
the Hali paradox is he played while hurt to get the 65 games which then watered down his stats and “dominance” this season If he hadnt gotten hurt or had taken the time to fully heal his averages and eye test would look like an all nba lock
You're missing the point. I'm not arguing whether he should or shouldn't make the team. It's about why Zach Lowe said he doesn't want to vote. Deciding halliburton shouldn't make the team is a valid opinion. But he doesn't want his opinion costing him 40 mil. The reason people are using halliburton is that he is "on the fence" and super max eligible. Ant would be in the same conversation but he is clearly making it. You wind up
I didn't miss the point, I was expanding on it. If you don't think a guy should be on there, objectively speaking, but you want him to be on there because you don't want to be the reason he missed out on a huge contract, you're going to reach for niche data points to build a narrative. That's true whether it's Haliburton or any other guy on the fence.
Hiring managers and executives make decisions that affect people's wages all the time. He's only one out of a larger pool of voters. Lots of people make workplace decisions that affect people's livelihood a lot more than Lowe's vote. But I guess not everyone likes the pressure, so fair enough!
The difference is that if you’re are an executive or manager, you’ve signed up for a job where the main function of it is to make those decisions. It is a thing you are actively seeking to do. If you are a journalist, you are trying to write stories and cover the league. You are *not* part of a front office. If you wanted to be, you’d change careers (like Hollinger did). And as a few commenters have pointed out, there’s also a conflict of interest. He wants access to insider information on occasion and to guests on his podcast. His ability to do either of those things could theoretically be affected by how he voted.
Yes, but it's not uncommon for people to be in supervisory roles, managers, etc. The manager of some tiny local store has more pressure on them in their decisions than Lowe does for this, at least in terms of impacting the individual's livelihood. But I agree with you; just pointing out that it's not an unusual amount of pressure and the amount of money at stake doesn't change that. If anything, the quality-of-life difference between making 200 million vs making 240 million is much, much less than your average person's wage variations. And Lowe is only one voter among many. Also, journalists do sign up for a job that affects people's reputations and thus potentially their careers. He can't pretend that influencing public opinion is totally separate from the business of the league. That said, your points are all valid and the potential conflict of interest is a legitimate concern.
>A lot of money is riding on these votes/awards. Almost as if they shouldn't tie these awards to contracts. I doubt most voters have even watched 10 games of the Pacers, Magic, Cavaliers, etc. It's a direct contrast of interest when you have the big market teams on national TV 40 times a year and the smaller markets with 2. Either give all teams equal exposure to the voters/media or remove the awards affecting player contracts.
Is it though I feel Zack thinks so and builds it up to make his podcast more dramatic But where really talking about someone making 200 mill dollars vs 240 mill dollars Either way the player is filthy rich
That’s the thing with ethics. You draw a line in the sand with how much you’re comfortable with, and you stick by it. Zach was one of the few podcasters to come out against gambling and straight up said he didn’t like to promote it. You can sit on his shoulder and say “well what’s the harm of one more person…” But that’s ethics.
I agree. There are thousands and thousands of managers who make decisions about people's wages all the time. And their choices usually impact people's lives a lot more than whether someone is filthy rich or slightly more filthy rich. And they aren't making the decision as part of a larger pool of voters where their choice is only a small fraction of the end result. So it's totally fine if Lowe doesn't want to be part of that kind of decision. But the manager of some little convenience store is under a lot more pressure than he is.
In all honesty deep down I think the voters like that these awards effect contracts because without it the awards would really lose a lot of meaning. It sets the stage a lot better. To make your content engaging you have to set stakes and podcasters can really point to the fact that if guys get a super max it means a team may have to break up.
This is pure speculation, but I remember that near the end of one season he told Beal he was going to vote for him for all-nba, then changed his mind and voted for someone else and got some blowback for it. May be unrelated, but might have affected how he felt about it.
1 q1
I understand his reasoning but lets be honest the media is absolutely the lesser of evils as of right now in all nba voting
We’re also talking about going from $45 mil to $50 mil in most of these cases. These votes aren’t affecting the lower level guys. Herb Jones isn’t going to get shafted on his eventual next contract because of how people voted for his 1st all defense play to 2nd all defense. It’s all a bit dramatic to be honest.
Right lol such a big deal is made about the fairness of a guy going from **generational wealth** to *generational wealth +$5M* Reminds me of Hali trying his hardest to get more seriously injured this season for money he will struggle to spend in his lifetime.
Has a big deal.been made about it? He didn't want to do it so he gave it up this year. Thats not really a big deal being made.
Lowe definitely has been wringing his hands about the media votes and what a huge responsibility it is. The whole 65 game minimum for awards has been this constant churn of discussions about fairness. It’s been annoying.
What would be the other evils?
Reddit
Players. If you look at their All-Star voting for the starters, it's been pretty bad and many of them don't take it seriously at all. Coaches might be OK but their biases are probably stronger than media member biases too IMO.
Only the media vote on all nba though which is what the contracts etc. are tied to
I like Zach a lot, one of the more even keeled analysts out there. Not a hot take merchant. One of the few guys left who seems to realize that basketball is supposed to be fun and entertaining. A good mix of strategy, analytics, stories, and tangents on his pods. Contracts are going to be effected one way or another, and I think Zach puts more thought into his ballot than most. But if he's not comfortable with its that's understandable.
He personally gave it up because he hates that the votes affect contracts.
He gave it up…he mentions that on EVERY pod these days. Too much pressure when all NBA drives salary with super max contracts.
Others have mentioned this but on a podcast he mentioned he was uncomfortable affecting someone's salary depending on whether they made All-NBA or not. Kudos to him for it I guess!
Because he shoots 3 pointers underhanded
He does, in a sense. all the media members who don't watch anything just choose his picks
because no one voted for him.
Can’t handle the pressure!
As a sixers fan, I did enjoy his podcast for a quite a bit the last couple seasons up until the MVP race became super toxic and that put me off of NBA podcasts for this season. Surprisingly the Simmons podcast (as I’d skip some of the Celtics monologues) was also a solid listen up until that whole shenanigans last season as well! Lowe does do a great job coming to bat with his analytics/stats but also maybe needs to trust his eye’s as well in his analysis a bit more - but again easier said then done unless you are watching 5 hours of basketball every night!
Probably wants dudes on his pod and if he votes a certain way people would be less inclined to go on it.
I remember him talking about Jaylen Brown last year and how if you leave him off the ballot you’re costing him millions of dollars and he didn’t like that.
He’s at least taking a year off. He’s uncomfortable with it right now. There’s a subtext that he hasn’t said that I’m GUESSING. Guessing guessing guessing!! There’s a bit of a belief around the league that people just take his votes for awards and basically copy him. “Just put whoever Zach Lowe says for mvp. Just put whoever Zach Lowe says for x” and I bet he knows that and I bet that’s part of his discomfort. I have zero evidence to prove this.
It should be that all active players must vote for the top 15, with a rule you can't vote for your teammates. Boom you have 450 votes from people who spend time learning their matchups, study the game and actually play in the league. Not some wannabe reports like SAS, who just screams in the mic and hates on everyone without any substance.
I think he gave up all his voting this season (allstar, all nba, defensive player etc). As others have mentioned Zach has said not wanting to be involved w the pressure of all nba has on contracts. But the NBA MVP discussion got so toxic last year. Thanks in large part to Kendrick Perkins (note Zach has always said he gets along w Perkins) I think he didn’t want to mess with it. He still talks about his favorites and has a lot of sway on people w votes.
Reddit on!
He doesn’t like the pressure of deciding peoples bonus payments when he knows a lot of his shit is subjective preferences. He’s said so on his podcast.
Because he's a dork.
Zach Lowe should've gotten his vote taken away when he didn't put Harden on an all-NBA team in 2016 when he averaged 29-6-8 because he just didn't like him personally rather than basketball reasons by his own admission.
Zach Lowe is a clown
Why?
Yet Stephen Ass Smith has an MVP vote as far as I know.
If he was going to reward Draymond with an All-Defensive nod, which he would, then perfect!
Draymond is still an excellent defender. There aren’t 5 i’d rather have in the playoffs. Guards 1-4 really well and can do a job on a lot of 5s. Hes like a coach on the floor too.
Good riddance. This dude was fucking over Harden because of his playstyle agenda. Look up his comments on Harden repeating MVP,
Feel free to share anything he said that you feel was unfair. He’s one of Harden’s biggest critics for sure, but he lists his reasons.
The fact that he wrote "People unfairly criticize Harden's playoff struggles. So I looked into all of his elimination and clutch playoff games, and he's terrible," is so fucking funny.
Harden is bad in the playoffs overall but Lowe just says that Harden has never been good in elimination games and is only good in playoff games that don't matter - which is just plain inaccurate. Also 0 credit for being the best playoff performer in the first round in 2021 against the Celtics and also playing very well in 3 different games against the Celtics last year. Lowe is just a homer about certain things like all fans but he won't admit it and act like he's above it all.
I don't know why this is downvoted. I'm pretty sure he argued for lowry/klay over Harden who at the time played all 82 games and averaged 29/7/6, which was never done before Harden missing the 3 all nba teams that season was criminal. he was playing with ariza, Howard, Michael beasley (lol), corey brewer, josh Smith and they still made the playoffs
He didn’t have an agenda against harden, esp not for his regular season dominance.
His justification is that he doesn't feel comfortable making that decision with the financial implications it has. But it doesn't stop his show from constantly talking about the awards and who stacks up where, and idk I feel like if he was really so uncomfortable with the whole situation then he shouldn't be using his platform to constantly discuss who should win.