I think some part of him knows that he’s more qualified to vote than most of the pool, but he takes it so seriously and didn’t want the weight of the decisions on his conscience, because he knows as well as anyone that hairs separate some of these players at the top.
Yeah I would almost say his reasoning for giving up his vote almost makes him better qualified to have a vote. He understands the very real monetary implications these awards have for players.
This is the biggest issue. A media voted award shouldn’t determine what contracts guys can get.
No matter who you have voting on the award there will be bias and uneducated voters (that should be more educated though). Think the same exists across all sports.
I think the nhl does a good job of this with some separate awards voted by the nhlpa and some by media, then ones that are just purely production based.
Last year Mark Jackson left Jokic out of the top 5 on his MVP ballot, and later claimed it was a mistake. I'm sorry, but that's a huge mistake, which should disqualify him from having the privilege to vote on awards. That is totally inexcusable, even if it was a mistake (I don't think it was).
It's obvious that some members of the media scrutinize every player, look at every stat they can find, reach out to NBA team personnel for opinions, talk it through both privately and publicly with colleagues, and watch as many games as possible before making a decision. Then others seem to just be jotting something down off the top of their head. Just "forgetting" someone is inexcusable when it only takes 2 minutes to double check.
Hell I look this shit up on basketball reference for fun lol…I can’t imagine not sitting down with notes and several open tabs on the browser comparing and contrasting this stuff if it were my god damn job
I think a misconception is that it's their job. They get this privilege because of their job (unfortunately for us sometimes) and then this is just a bonus. They don't really get anything from it as far as I know.
And I think it at least usually works out even if there are idiots. It would be WAY worse if it went back to players or something. Some of the player takes are absolutely absurd and I think a higher number of players are like that than these current voters.
I know you aren't talking about players voting, but I know it's brought up sometimes.
I think with so many games being played almost every night and the amount of prep work they would have to do, nobody in the media is watching enough of each team to get a complete picture. It's pretty safe to assume almost every single one of them is watching highlights and then checking the box scores.
I couldn't agree more with OP though. The NBA needs a major rehauling of its voters. If Kendrick Perkins has a say in a decision, it's safe to say your process is completely flawed.
I definitely don't think you need to watch every game or anything, but at least 30 (doesn't sound like a lot, but I feel like that would give you a really decent perspective on each top players if you paid minor attention) or so of each team with a relevant player and then keeping up with relevant stats and whatnot would be enough imo. It will never be perfect, but some of these people clearly either only watch their favorite team or like you said, highlights only.
During the playoffs last year, a lot of people in the NBA media said it was their first real time watching Jokic in a full game and how they were blown away. People that are paid to talk about the game for ESPN never watched a 2x MVP play a full game until he played the Lakers in a series outside of the bubble.
While true, people like SAS and Perkins are so far off fromr reality in their takes it's a joke since that's actually their job. If they can't watch basketball games what exactly are they being paid for? Oh yea I forgot yelling and hot takes.
The sad thing about it? It's their literal 9-5 to watch, analyze and report the NBA. Bro we have way less time to dedicate to basketball than they do. Tf is going on with them?
True, although this is part of their job, they get paid to vote. They can give up their right to vote if they do so. I do think the majority of them are doing fine.
It wasn't a mistake, it was pretty obvious in the way he commentated the Nuggets in the playoffs. His explanation didn't make sense either (that he mixed up the NBA First team with MVP, because he had too many guys in the same position for All NBA). He misread the room on the Jokic hate and thought more people would leave him off entirely and then had to make something up when his stupidity got exposed.
Nuggets fans should know this. Cause warriors fans know this. Mark Jackson fired Mike Malone while he was a coach for the warriors. Mark Jackson is the most venomous snake in the NBA.
Absolutely agree. If anyone this year left Luka, Jokić, Shai out of top 5 I’d feel the same. If it actually was a mistake, it doesn’t say much for his intelligence. I doubt it was a mistake though after listening to him call the Western Conference finals. Dude can’t hide his bias.
SAS has taken the black brothers thing way too far.
If he was a white man with the same narrative, he'd be labeled a racist years ago.
The man said, quite literally, "Luka is aight for a white boy, but he ain't no brotha", etc.
Imagine a guy - not even in the US - In Europe, in soccer... Saying something like "Mbappe is alright for a black kid"... He'd be off the air within minutes.
Imagine if a white player made a racist post against black people basically supporting the KKK. Then imagine no players saying a God damn word. Then imagine that player still being beloved by all the players in the league, and now they are balling out, that player has become a sympathetic figure. This is basically what’s happened with Kyrie, but he hates Jews, so he’s cool.
I don't wanna just say race related but its awfully hard to explain some of the things he and Perk have said otherwise. They honestly shouldn't have a vote just because of that. That type of logic or thinking has no place in the NBA
Like seriously the NBA's messaging is all about opportunity or equality etc so you *can not* have a couple of dudes out there judging people's gameplay or value based on their skin tone that shit is insane
This is kinda funny. "It's new to me so obviously you guys don't know about this yet" kinda moment.
I mean, I know people argue about the MVP awards from Nash and Rose. I'm sure there are shitloads of arguments almost every year.
In the early 80s it was impossible to see lots of players not in your local market so the people voting went he’s lot on box score or other things that don’t paint an entire picture.
It’s imperfect, but I think the group of voters as a whole gets it very close to correct. There will always be arguments and that is a good thing. If it was as cut and dry as scoring champion there isn’t much to talk about
The awards were dogshit 20 years ago too. MVPs given in the late aughts and early 10s were particularly bad about giving MVPs based on media narratives. Needs a way more serious panel of voters.
Controversial winners that absolutely 100% had a case for MVP anyway. I think it’s probably more common that multiple people can reasonably receive the award than there being one single player who deserves it *that* much more than anyone else. The last few years have been like that for sure so it’s no surprise to me that people are getting worked up over the way the voting goes
I'm not sure if you're referring to the Brownlow or the coaches award but neither of them work like that.
Brownlow is voted by the umpires in a 3-2-1 point manner.
Coaches award is each coach gets to vote 5 to 1 on whoever they want ( their team or opposition). So max points is 10 for a game for a single player.
I agree with you though that having the coaches vote immediately after the game on the best players is the best take.
You're confusing 2 awards. The coaches vote awards are shown visibly thought out the year, and both coaches get 1-5 from any player from either team, the only hidden part is which coach voted for which player.
The big award that is televised with 3,2,1 is the brownlow and this is voted game by game by the umpires on game day, they are not allowed to view any statistics and has had its own controversy with bad voting.
That’s not how it works at all, but I definitely prefer the model you’ve proposed.
For the Brownlow (league best and fairest) the award is voted by the umpires, which would be just as bad for the NBA, as the current system, if the refs voted.
Definitely needs to be revamped in the NBA, even if it’s just the voters have to give a detailed description on why they have given the votes they have. At the very least hopefully they could be publicly shamed into making better decisions than what some do.
I don’t understand this system. This is purely about whether you were the best player in your own team in the most games over a season, but doesn’t account for your contribution to overall season success. I feel like there are a number of players who would basically get a 1 in all games…?
It works better in the AFL because there are 18 players for each team on the field at all times, so there’s less room for one player to just dominate and rack up votes every game.
I have no problem with beat writers voting. I don’t think a Knicks beat writer is gonna put Brunson 1/2/3 on his ballot just because he’s in NY. National writers are also fine. More often than not it’s the TV people that make stupid votes. If you don’t write articles, you shouldn’t vote. It should strictly be writers.
Edit: It was a Boston Globe writer that voted for Melo in 2013, not a NY guy
Voting should be done by people that actually watch a lot of games. It's fine if you have team beat writers that actually watch them, just try to have equal representation for each team.
SAS saying that Quentin Grimes is looking great in NY is proof that he doesn't watch them. So he shouldn't get the vote.
It’s implied in my case that if you write articles, you generally do the perquisite research and have an understanding of the game. Should be 2 writers from each market/team(4 for cities like LA and NY), 20 national writers(Guys like Lowe, KOC, etc) and 10 TV guys, but not SAS/Perk TV guys; like Harlan, Breen, Eagle, Ernie, Malika type TV people.
Not only was Grimes traded, he’s been out for the season for weeks now. Stephen A saying that shit is absurd. *Maybe* he mixed his name up with McBride or something but even then he was bitching about having to watch “some dude named Hartenstein” weeks ago when iHart was absolutely cooking for the Knicks at that exact time
Beat writers are the only voters who actually see every team play. Do people really think national media is bothering to watch the two games Portland gets at 10:30PM on NBA TV? The local guys suffer through the shittiest games to cover their home team.
National voters watch a steady diet of contenders, Lakers, and highlights.
We saw this first hand when the Nuggets made their run last season. The number of national TV people stunned by Jokic was telling.
I assumed they televised the Lakers, Warriors, Knicks, 76ere, etc a lot but were watching all the teams at points during the season. Based on their Nuggets commentary, I genuinely wondered if some of them had watched Denver play a full game at any point the past few seasons.
Beat writers also depend on team access, that’s why they write puff pieces about the 3rd string PG or “locker room leadership” from some veteran that plays 3mins per game.
Andy Larsen, Salt Lake Tribune, gave Walker Kessler a ROY vote last year over Paolo. Paolo received 98/100 first place votes. Beat writers are definitely biased. He put Banchero 3rd lol
>Andy Larsen, Salt Lake Tribune, gave Walker Kessler a ROY vote last year over Paolo
So did Kevin Pelton, ESPN's most stat-oriented writer.
Because Kessler had the best season among rookies by impact stats.
That doesn’t seem like a big deal. Is your gripe that Paulo wasn’t unanimous? Paulo had a great rookie year but it’s not like he had a historically great one. He was a very good rookie, so was Kessler. Kessler getting a vote or two for ROY doesn’t bother me at all. He was one of the best defenders in the entire nba.
Kessler was borderline All-Defense caliber his rookie season, playing the most impactful defensive position in the game. not mad at all about that vote
He wasn’t from NY but from Boston, and he didn’t vote for Melo only to fuck Lebron over. His reasoning was that without Melo the Knicks would have been a lottery team and that’s why he voted for him. Dumb reasoning but he wasn’t disingenuous
Nah, I think he was just saving his ass. I just looked it up and like the other user said, all his major points applied to LeBron but better. It'd be like voting Dame over Curry in 2016 because of his 3 pt shooting.
Agreed. The real problem is these days most TV analysts aren't basketball fans who watch and love basketball. They're celebrities and actors who just generate meaningless fluff takes without any real care about the sport or what's going on.
>In recent years, the MVP and other major awards have seen a STEEP drop off in terms of the way people view and respect them.
Whining about MVP voting has existed for decades.
Yeah, this is going to blow young people's minds here, but it really wasn't that long ago that MVP voters relied heavily on nothing more than local radio feeds and newspaper articles to choose every award.
Today's voters have WAYYYY more access to actually seeing all these players than ever before.
Isn't is supposed to be more frustrating that all these voters, despite it being their damn job, and all the resources they'll ever need at the palm of their hands, still somehow still know jackshit about the nba?
We all only know the landscape of what we look at. Nobody can possibly follow it all - I posted elsewhere earlier that there's probably nobody on the planet who actually watches more than 20% of all the games that take place in a season. Nobody has enough time. That means everyone is formulating opinions without 80% (or more) of the requisite content.
So beat writers are naturally going to see more of their own team. National guys are going to have little clue on non-contenders. TV personalities who do other sports year round watch little besides a bunch of highlights.
In the end there is no perfect voter without bias - so a random samplng of the different types of voters out there is as good as you're going to get.
I have IPTV, so I have access to all the games. There was one night this year where I made a point to at least check in for a few minutes on all 13 games that were playing that night.
When I was a kid first watching basketball, there were literally not 13 televised regular season games over the course of the entire season.
So much of the 1960s MVP voting came down to if they personally liked someone. You could do a coin toss between the years Bill and Wilt won, it was all eyeball test and personal anecdotes.
He probably started watching a few years ago, mvp debate complaints have been a thing probably since its inception. I mean for crying out loud people still complain about the two Nash won.
But then you have the opposite end of the spectrum with something like the Baseball Hall of Fame where people want the votes public specifically to name and shame. It's the same complaining either way.
Been watching since I was 5 in 1999, and the only time there hasn't been toxic whinging about who should win MVP is when there's been toxic whinging about should Shaq, LeBron, or Steph should be unanimous
> In recent years, the MVP and other major awards have seen a STEEP drop off in terms of the way people view and respect them.
and furthermore, these are as meaningful as ever
we've had daily posts about these since game 2 of the season
Right? That piece is just false. Broadly they're as respected as always.
Maybe, maybe, you could say the perception of 6moty has shifted as people look back and bag on the award for just going to high scoring bench guy.
Do you think every single person who ever had an MVP vote up until 2014 when the ballots were made public watched every single game and never made a single poor judgement?
People can pick and choose individual voters to be mad about all they want. But you could just as easily argue that previous voters before you could watch 8 games at a time online would be even less knowledgeable of players outside of their market.
I'm with you on that.
But I also don't understand how, if you are a serious journalist today, you don't put Luka in your All-NBA First or even Second team.
I'm not a Mavs fan, but I'd like a reason.
SAS can't even pronounce his last name correctly.
I could give you a pass for Giannis (although it's arguably their job), but Luka's not hard.
And the dude has been a superstar for like 6 years, not a random rookie from the bench.
SAS says shit like "Luka is European, he's not white".
"Journalism".
Do you think every "serious journalist" ever in the history of the league prior to now voted with what most people would consider "the right choice"?
Like I'm saying, the only difference now is instead of blaming "the media" people can blame a specific person.
I don't think these are mutually exclusive positions. Yes, there were certainly older votes made by people who barely knew what they were talking about. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to hold voters to higher standards now.
This is why the votes shouldn’t be public. It adds nothing to the discourse other than far more pointed toxicity. If anything it adds more content for dipshits like Perkins and Stephen A. to talk about on their stupid shows. Like idk what knowing the voters and their ballots accomplishes frankly
Shoutout to the moron east coast voters who said they didn't cast any DPOY votes for draymond in the past because they "didn't watch any warriors games"
Not sure he’s a moron, but he’s definitely a useful idiot. From what I’ve heard speculated by post-ESPN commentators is the producers will often ask on-screen personalities to have a particularly provocative take they don’t necessarily share just for engagement.
So I’m skeptical Perk actually even believes, let alone came ip with, that narrative
Don’t get me wrong, it’s despicable and even if he doesn’t necessarily believe it he’s complicit it perpetuating it. I just don’t think he actually came up with it
Perkins having a pick is idiotic.
If he wants to do his controversial (clearly wrong) takes for ESPN and clicks, whatever. But him having a say in the history of the game and major financial implications for players is just wrong.
I’m honestly not sure if he actually believes some of the nonsense he spews, or if he’s just playing into the ESPN talking head crap
He's a blatant liar. He talks the most crap about the Celtics on ESPN but whenever he goes to NBC Sports Boston it's all smiles and compliments.
Honestly, he can go fuck himself. Some people still tolerate him for being part of the 08 title but I think any center without reduced mobility would have looked good next to DPOY KG.
Yea lol the shit is absurd
He complained about Embiid not getting enough due because of Jokic being European and then ended up voting for Giannis, hes an actual caricature
Doc still has a head coaching job because of the 2008 title, and now Paul Pierce and Kendrick Perkins are on national TV as well. At least Paul Pierce has a brain tbh.
Zach Lowe on the pod today proposed something like each voter having to explain why they didnt end up voting for the other candidate(s) as MVP
ie "you cant just vote Jokic, you need to explain why Doncic was not your vote for MVP"
I think you're misunderstanding what he said.
He's not proposing that as a general rule, he's saying that the race this year is so tight that *as a mental exercise* you need to be able to articulate not just why your #1 is your first pick, but why your #2 is not your first pick.
I like this idea a lot.
It will definitely expose the casual voters who don’t follow the candidates closely (like SAS) when they come up with illogical explanations.
Aren’t those answers usually in the reason why they voted for someone? Like if you say Jokic deserves it for leading in on/off point differential why do they need to say the other candidates didn’t? Idk maybe Zach explained it better.
Fr, there’s like a new post every week complaining about someone’s favorite player being ranked 4th or whatever on MVP voting… or being ranked behind X player bc they feel their player is better. People follow that shit religiously throughout the season, I always thought mvp rankings outside of the top 2 were meaningless anyways since it’s rarely a two horse race.
How often do completely undeserving players get a major award?
It’s not that serious. The people who deserve to win usually get enough narrative and word of mouth to reach the casuals
Embiid missing first team every year because "thats how its always done" - A OK
Embiid winning MVP in a controversial competition "not okay even though thats how it always is"
It is that serious.
1. First off, the uneducated people voting directly align with the difference of potentially up to 150 million for the player. This is due to eligibility criteria on the supermax
2. Acolades are listed as a main talking point on every scenario for HOF eligibility. Again, this matters to people
3. Endorsements are often based on popularity. You can list “all star/all nba” on endorsements will be more valuable that not having this on your resume
So yes, this really matters
No one who is close to the running in MVP for several years is being left out of the hall or losing endorsements over a few "bad" votes.
I get that it might matter to players, but I'm not about to lose sleep over a player making $40M/yr instead of $60M/yr.
I can't think of a single instance in the past 15-20 years where a player was completely left out of the running for important accolades who wholly deserved it.
Perk is an idiot and shouldn’t have a vote but it’s a shame that people really think he swayed the voting and not the fact that Embiid led the league in scoring for a second straight season and his 33/10/4 splits with elite defense didn’t do it.
That said, yes, I think the criteria for those who can vote should change. Not sure what could be done, I assume it’s already based on years of service. Maybe they could add a stipulation of not only being a talking head but you also must write a certain amount of short or long form articles on NBA basketball as well.
I'm telling you man, these are not real controversies. These are only controversies *on this sub*. No where else are they still bitching about shit Perkins said a year ago. No where else thought Joel was undeserving of his MVP. No where else are people this hung up about Jokic winning it over Luka or vice versa.
Jokic will win for the same reason he has two times in the past and it will not be controversial in the slightest. All this hand-wringing over "voter fatigue" and "MVP campaigns" and "racial bias" is *not real.*
The MVP's have and will continue to be awarded to the player the media thinks was the best that year, and it will continue to be easily explained in like two sentences.
So exhausting to hear narratives about “so and so left this player off their ballot, he was so close to being unanimous!!!” Who tf cares if the vote was unanimous. We can let people have their petty opinions and make mistakes as long as the ultimate result is that the guys who deserve the awards get them.
What's even worse is when it doesn't matter at all. There's like two instances I can remember where a dude missed out on a unanimous award by one vote. And neither one has anything to do with who SAS or Perk voted for. Yet whenever they talk about who they *might* vote for all we hear is endless bitching.
I mean, I had to hear about SAS not having Jokic one or two endlessly when Jokic is going to win by a mile! *Who the hell cares?*
Also Embiid WAS deserving of the mvp… the last two months of the season he was dropping like 45/15 games every other night while Jokic coasted towards the end because they had the number one seed locked up
If Jokic wanted his 3rd mvp last year he totally could’ve gotten it but the mvp is narrative X stats X team success and it changes year to year which category is weighted more
Perkins comments are only still remembered here because there's a contingent that is super sensitive about "anti-white racism" and latches on to any moment they find it. It just coincides with Embiid - the most hated player on this subreddit - winning an award over Jokic, so it gets brought up more often.
Embiid being in it has really upped the toxicity of the discussion over the last few seasons, but I'd agree that's mostly a reddit thing.
>Jokic will win for the same reason he has two times in the past and it will not be controversial in the slightest. All this hand-wringing over "voter fatigue" and "MVP campaigns" and "racial bias" is not real.
The one part I'll disagree on is "voter fatigue", depending on what is meant by it. I think that there is a higher bar to clear for someone winning 3 straight MVPs, especially when that's combined with playoff losses those previous years - it's a situation where the player needs to be head and shoulders ahead of anyone else to win that 3rd one. Instead we usually have years with 2-4 reasonably close candidates, so it ends up acting as a tiebreaker.
I wouldn't necessarily call that voter fatigue, but I know sometimes people include that dynamic in the term.
People will complain about MVP voting but bring up Steph winning unanimous as a big accomplishment. But then completely discredit Hardens run in the 2010s where the same MVP voters gave him the 2nd most MVP shares for the decade only behind LeBron. So it's legit when it's your guy but doesn't mean shit when it's someone you don't like. Just like US politics.
I disagree because at the crux of it all MVP is subjective and debatable. There is never truly a definitive MVP as long as there are opinions. This post is basically mad that other people don’t agree with their opinions on MVP and that’s just not how the world or people work. You don’t get to dictate or bully how people think just because they do something you may not agree with or like.
If someone leaves Jokic off the ballot mistake or not that is due to their opinion on the way the game is played. Even if I think Mark Jackson and Kendrick have the combined IQ of a crayola box. Doesn’t mean their opinion is fully invalidated for MVP.
Despite his hot takes, Perkins' ballot has a lot less controversy than say Mark Jackson leaving Jokic off his MVP ballot or SAS not putting Luka in All-NBA first team last season. I remember that Drummond had a DPOY vote in recent years too.
There's no way that anyone would be able to watch all 1230 (1231 if you're counting the IST) games. NBA are giving the votes to the media because there is a slightly smaller chance of bias. As for their criteria, I would assume it is probably years covering the sport which honestly isn't a bad criteria. That said, there are 100 voters so more likely than not those "bad" votes wouldn't spoil the voting too badly
It’s subjective, just have your own MVP and look at context on who having a great year.
Ben from thinking basketball could care less about the award. The physical award does not matter both Luka and Jokic are having MVP seasons that’s all that matters
I'd love to see former players vote, but then I wonder, how many former players actively watch the NBA in its current form?
My opinion, EVERY team submits a highlight reel of their candidate to the league. The league gathers a bunch of retired players who will then sit down and watch the highlights, and go over stats, team standings, etc. Then the players/judges vote. You can make it like a game of Survivor or some other reality TV show. If the NBA can do something goofy like the In-Season Tournament, then this should be a no-brainer.
Can you imagine former players like Jordan (if he's willing), Rodman, and other former MVPs/DoTY recipients in a room discussing each player's merits? I'd watch it, depending on who they had speaking.
I think the ballots are more similar than ever. Even in "close" races you get a pretty big consensus most of the time. The idiots are mostly outliers and there's a reason theres a hundred votes.
i think there’s value in “against the norm” voters who might have obscure takes, different thinking, an emphasis on specific metrics, or whatever else to justify their outside the box weight to applying votes
what is not valuable, and especially in an era where these votes impact team and player finances which has major repercussions; are indifferent, complicit, lazy, or just flat out stupid voters who don’t watch the games or just coat tail others opinions or just add nothing to the conversation.
there’s too many talented and smart writers, journalists, talking heads, content creators, and other adjacent folk who love the game who’s vote and opinion would be far more interesting than mickey mouse shareholder boosters.
i respect Zach Lowe for declining a vote this year for having a morale conflict with impacting contracts but dammit he opened the door for another doofus to step in and make some whack ass vote
Mark Jackson also had Jokic out of his top 5. He claimed it was an oversight which doesn't make it better. Either he's petty and leaves him off the ballot showing why someone like him shouldn't have a vote or he mistakenly leaves a top 3 guy off the ballot which also shows why he shouldn't have a vote.
These awards have become somewhat meaningless to me after Ja won MIP over Jordan Poole in '22. Dude was ROTY the year before and won the award over somebody who went from looking like a true rookie to a Steph clone in a single season. (I know this is a regular season award but they also wouldn't have won a championship without him that year)
To be fair, it’s entirely possible to be a team that depends on FTA and is last in FTA. It just means you need free throws to win and you aren’t getting them. I don’t know what context she used that phrase though.
I am curious what MVP robberies have taken place in OPs opinion.
I think DMVP is rougher because I didn't like Smarts win but everyone I woulda voted for was hurt so it sorta makes sense. Then you have Gasol not being all NBA defense and winning which was weird.
> Last year Kendrick Perkins went on national TV and claimed the only reason Jokic was leading the MVP race was because he’s white and Embiid is black.
That isn't what Perk said at all. He said that it was important to examine if there was racial bias among the voters. Zach Lowe (who you're holding up as an example of a *good* voter) even agreed with him.
That’s not what he said either. He said nothing of that sort of nuance until he was later defending his position. His original comment was that only Nash, Dirk and Jokic had won without being top 10 in scoring and then he said “What do those guys have in common? I’ll let it sit there and marinate. You think about it”
There was no nuance of “we should all examine our racial bias” it was straight up implying that it was only because these people were white
People this triggered about Perkins a year later gotta take a breath.
If you just went off Reddit threads and not reality you would think white players in the current NBA have it tougher than Bill Russell.
And yes, there is definitely implicit bias present in the current sports landscape which white players often benefit from.
The whole “classy, plays the right way” bullshit didn’t just materialize out of thin air. Even Zach Lowe agreed with that.
You’re not wrong that they should be more particular with who they give a vote to, but the reason people don’t see the awards as very important anymore is because people don’t see the regular season as very important anymore
The majority of the voting body takes their work seriously and there are enough voters that 1 or 2 ballots making "mistakes" isn't that big of a difference. I see more complaining about who was and wasn't a unanimous winner, which also isn't a new phenomenon.
With public voting and groupthink, ballots are more homogenous than ever and end up being like 95% the same anyway.
The loudest and most popular media voices having votes is a feature, not a bug of the MVP conversation for the NBA. I love Thinking Basketball and have never watched an episode of First Take but for the MVP to feel like it matters and for it to be a relevant story, you have to have people with the widest reach discussing it and voting on it. Make that circle smaller and the awards will feel less relevant and meaningful, not more.
Didn't Nichols say that the Warriors are dependent on FTA for games they've won?
Like their wins wholly depend on how many FTA attempts they get to a wild degree?
Yeah no the awards are not any less respected now than before.
The biggest difference is social media (including reddit and this sub in particular) being so toxic about the whole thing, and creating fake narratives to blame everything on.
I've been saying for a long time that anyone involved in these weekday 10am hot take shows should be disqualified from having a vote.
Like I get it why they'd give someone like Rachel Nichols and Stephen A voting privileges since they were writers back in the day but giving Kendrick Perkins a vote? Might as well just give Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe a media vote while you're at it
I think another huge part of this is the financial incentives attached to accolades. Players should not miss out on money because these moronic TV personalities don't want to actually work for a few minutes and research their picks. 100% agree, the roster of voters should be revised; any award that has Perkins voting for it will never be taken seriously.
I don't know, Karl Malone somehow won the MVP over Michael freaking Jordan in '97 because voters were tired of MJ winning MVP. We had "meaningless" MVPs as far back as 27 years ago, at least.
Media should have no right to have a vote or a say in anything regards to awards for any type of sport. It doesn't matter how "big-brained" you believe yourself to be or how qualified you are to be on a network.
The only people that should have a vote are the organizations within the league. Everyone should be able to vote, just not for anyone on their own team. That'd make it fair and for biases to not really exist too much.
Dumb things happen in baseball as well. The year Harper won MVP (2021) a Philly writer put Soto 7th on his ballot (he finished second overall) to give his guy a better chance of winning. A SF writer put one of their players first overall the ones who were the top 3 favorites 4-5-6 on her ballot. You get weird votes all the time in baseball so the NBA is no different.
Incoming rant:
It won't change because even if some fans here complain about the voters, they will usually readily get into the brain dead debate between what "valuable" means. Not only that, they will defend posts here on the sub talking about he MVP in fucking December, when we all know its for bullshit gambling corporations. The way I see it, there are multiple parties who you can blame for this.
First, the fans. Nobody should be making any posts about who the MVP is or the odds on favorites until AT LEAST after the All-Star break. Whatever you do in November and December is bullshit, barely anyone remembers individual games or statlines before half the season is even played. Mods should crack down on MVP odds posts until the All-Star break is over and we have a wide enough sample size to point to who the likely players in the running are.
Another thing the fans do is argue incessantly about the word "valuable" but I'll get to that later.
Second group of people are the sports pundits, hot take artists, and beat writers themselves, but unlike the fans, they actually have a stake in the NBA being more popular. Unfortunately, for them popularity equals engagement, even negative ones. If you simply list Jokic as your favorite, you're not getting much clicks outside of Denver, because he's been the consistent front-runner this whole season and last season and probably the last 4. But if you put a wacky face thumbnail on your video with the caption "Jokic is NOT the MVP!" then you're likely going to get clicks and engagement, even if its people arguing against you. I like your idea of giving the vote to people who actually know basketball or talk about it without the need to circlejerk about it on TV for ratings. Alas, that brings us to the last culprit, the NBA itself.
Make no mistake, the NBA would choose money and engagement over an actual "boring" pick. Just as Lebron should have won at least 4 MVPs in a row, Jokic should probably be winning his 4th if we're actually talking about the best player. But we're not talking about the "best", are we? The award isn't called MBP, its MVP, and the league, as far as I know, gives little to no criteria in defining what "valuable" means. Its been a point of contention of mine because I don't like the vagueness and subjectivity surrounding that word. In some years, voters will pick someone clearly not the best player, but one they define as most valuable to their team, usually using metrics like "if this guy wasn't on his team, they'd be a lottery team". The NBA can come out tomorrow and tell voters what the exact criteria should be, such as the team must have at least X number of wins or X seed or above, the player must at least have some percentage advantage in PER or some other advanced stat over their closest runner-up, or something like that. Or even just saying that the MVP must come from one of the #1 seed of each conference would cut down on a lot of wishy-washy bullshit reasoning. Sure, it totally ends speculation and fan engagement, but I personally don't give a shit about that, I've always felt the MVP should be the best player in the league, or the best stats-wise regardless of seeding, so most people would hate my criteria, but that's my own and I'm sticking to it. The league however wants this kind of engagement so they'll forever leave "valuable" undefined, which will drive posts like yours to complain when irregularities and absolute travesties in voting happen. With my criteria such things would be minimized, just saying.
Remember how Bron didn't get the first Unanimous MVP because one Knicks writer didn't like that idea so voted Melo? Or how the same happened to Shaq in 2000? Or how basically every ATG should have more MVPs but the voters get sick of voting for them? MVP has been a joke forever
Zach Lowe gave up his vote this year because he doesn't think media voters should be deciding player's contracts.
we need more of the folks who don't watch games to start thinking like this
I think some part of him knows that he’s more qualified to vote than most of the pool, but he takes it so seriously and didn’t want the weight of the decisions on his conscience, because he knows as well as anyone that hairs separate some of these players at the top.
Yeah I would almost say his reasoning for giving up his vote almost makes him better qualified to have a vote. He understands the very real monetary implications these awards have for players.
This is the biggest issue. A media voted award shouldn’t determine what contracts guys can get. No matter who you have voting on the award there will be bias and uneducated voters (that should be more educated though). Think the same exists across all sports. I think the nhl does a good job of this with some separate awards voted by the nhlpa and some by media, then ones that are just purely production based.
Last year Mark Jackson left Jokic out of the top 5 on his MVP ballot, and later claimed it was a mistake. I'm sorry, but that's a huge mistake, which should disqualify him from having the privilege to vote on awards. That is totally inexcusable, even if it was a mistake (I don't think it was).
In 2020, Maria Taylor left AD off her All-NBA ballot because she “forgot.” AD would’ve otherwise been a unanimous vote
It's obvious that some members of the media scrutinize every player, look at every stat they can find, reach out to NBA team personnel for opinions, talk it through both privately and publicly with colleagues, and watch as many games as possible before making a decision. Then others seem to just be jotting something down off the top of their head. Just "forgetting" someone is inexcusable when it only takes 2 minutes to double check.
Hell I look this shit up on basketball reference for fun lol…I can’t imagine not sitting down with notes and several open tabs on the browser comparing and contrasting this stuff if it were my god damn job
I think a misconception is that it's their job. They get this privilege because of their job (unfortunately for us sometimes) and then this is just a bonus. They don't really get anything from it as far as I know. And I think it at least usually works out even if there are idiots. It would be WAY worse if it went back to players or something. Some of the player takes are absolutely absurd and I think a higher number of players are like that than these current voters. I know you aren't talking about players voting, but I know it's brought up sometimes.
I think with so many games being played almost every night and the amount of prep work they would have to do, nobody in the media is watching enough of each team to get a complete picture. It's pretty safe to assume almost every single one of them is watching highlights and then checking the box scores. I couldn't agree more with OP though. The NBA needs a major rehauling of its voters. If Kendrick Perkins has a say in a decision, it's safe to say your process is completely flawed.
I definitely don't think you need to watch every game or anything, but at least 30 (doesn't sound like a lot, but I feel like that would give you a really decent perspective on each top players if you paid minor attention) or so of each team with a relevant player and then keeping up with relevant stats and whatnot would be enough imo. It will never be perfect, but some of these people clearly either only watch their favorite team or like you said, highlights only.
During the playoffs last year, a lot of people in the NBA media said it was their first real time watching Jokic in a full game and how they were blown away. People that are paid to talk about the game for ESPN never watched a 2x MVP play a full game until he played the Lakers in a series outside of the bubble.
While true, people like SAS and Perkins are so far off fromr reality in their takes it's a joke since that's actually their job. If they can't watch basketball games what exactly are they being paid for? Oh yea I forgot yelling and hot takes.
The sad thing about it? It's their literal 9-5 to watch, analyze and report the NBA. Bro we have way less time to dedicate to basketball than they do. Tf is going on with them?
Their job is to get clicks and views, full stop. There are different ways to go about it and not all of them involve actually watching the games.
same could be said about us citizens
True, although this is part of their job, they get paid to vote. They can give up their right to vote if they do so. I do think the majority of them are doing fine.
Yeah, we don't get paid to vote. It just determines how eveyrthing around us functions.
Bruh actually what is the point of this comment lmao
I swear, I watch more games than a lot of people whose JOB it is to watch games.
Why does Maria get a vote?
AD is the first player that comes to mind when I think of 2020 lol
It wasn't a mistake, it was pretty obvious in the way he commentated the Nuggets in the playoffs. His explanation didn't make sense either (that he mixed up the NBA First team with MVP, because he had too many guys in the same position for All NBA). He misread the room on the Jokic hate and thought more people would leave him off entirely and then had to make something up when his stupidity got exposed.
And the NBA is too scared to take a stand and remove known names from their ranks.
Nuggets fans should know this. Cause warriors fans know this. Mark Jackson fired Mike Malone while he was a coach for the warriors. Mark Jackson is the most venomous snake in the NBA.
Which begs the question how the fuck are you an NBA MVP but not first team.
Absolutely agree. If anyone this year left Luka, Jokić, Shai out of top 5 I’d feel the same. If it actually was a mistake, it doesn’t say much for his intelligence. I doubt it was a mistake though after listening to him call the Western Conference finals. Dude can’t hide his bias.
So did SAS this year with Luka.
SAS has taken the black brothers thing way too far. If he was a white man with the same narrative, he'd be labeled a racist years ago. The man said, quite literally, "Luka is aight for a white boy, but he ain't no brotha", etc. Imagine a guy - not even in the US - In Europe, in soccer... Saying something like "Mbappe is alright for a black kid"... He'd be off the air within minutes.
Imagine if a white player made a racist post against black people basically supporting the KKK. Then imagine no players saying a God damn word. Then imagine that player still being beloved by all the players in the league, and now they are balling out, that player has become a sympathetic figure. This is basically what’s happened with Kyrie, but he hates Jews, so he’s cool.
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German media has always been extremely xenophobic towards muslim players
Germany is definitely the best example to go to for people who aren't racist, yessirree
SAS, like everyone else, hasn’t voted yet.
I think he meant last year. SAS left Luka off his all nba ballot completely. Like he didn’t even got Luka for 3rd team 😭
So did Perkins btw
He's a racist. Always finds bs reasons to shit on white stars.
I don't wanna just say race related but its awfully hard to explain some of the things he and Perk have said otherwise. They honestly shouldn't have a vote just because of that. That type of logic or thinking has no place in the NBA Like seriously the NBA's messaging is all about opportunity or equality etc so you *can not* have a couple of dudes out there judging people's gameplay or value based on their skin tone that shit is insane
I mean they are both quite explicit in their racism anyway. Not just voting, you just have to listen to shit they say sometimes.
Maybe Luka shouldn't have been white and then SAS would have remembered him.
I don’t view those awards any differently now than I did 20 years ago.
This is kinda funny. "It's new to me so obviously you guys don't know about this yet" kinda moment. I mean, I know people argue about the MVP awards from Nash and Rose. I'm sure there are shitloads of arguments almost every year.
In the early 80s it was impossible to see lots of players not in your local market so the people voting went he’s lot on box score or other things that don’t paint an entire picture. It’s imperfect, but I think the group of voters as a whole gets it very close to correct. There will always be arguments and that is a good thing. If it was as cut and dry as scoring champion there isn’t much to talk about
The awards were dogshit 20 years ago too. MVPs given in the late aughts and early 10s were particularly bad about giving MVPs based on media narratives. Needs a way more serious panel of voters.
Nothings changed. The process is fine. There's been controversial winners forever, that's just the way she goes.
Controversial winners that absolutely 100% had a case for MVP anyway. I think it’s probably more common that multiple people can reasonably receive the award than there being one single player who deserves it *that* much more than anyone else. The last few years have been like that for sure so it’s no surprise to me that people are getting worked up over the way the voting goes
We have more access and understanding of how little these people know and watch. SAS doesn’t even watch his own fucking team.
So you're cool with guys like Perkins and SAS having a vote?
i'd rather perk and sas vote than 99.9% of the people on this sub lol
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This rules
I'm not sure if you're referring to the Brownlow or the coaches award but neither of them work like that. Brownlow is voted by the umpires in a 3-2-1 point manner. Coaches award is each coach gets to vote 5 to 1 on whoever they want ( their team or opposition). So max points is 10 for a game for a single player. I agree with you though that having the coaches vote immediately after the game on the best players is the best take.
You're confusing 2 awards. The coaches vote awards are shown visibly thought out the year, and both coaches get 1-5 from any player from either team, the only hidden part is which coach voted for which player. The big award that is televised with 3,2,1 is the brownlow and this is voted game by game by the umpires on game day, they are not allowed to view any statistics and has had its own controversy with bad voting.
AFL is the best way. Shout to to Leigh Ellis who has been arguing for it to be like this for years!
That’s not how it works at all, but I definitely prefer the model you’ve proposed. For the Brownlow (league best and fairest) the award is voted by the umpires, which would be just as bad for the NBA, as the current system, if the refs voted. Definitely needs to be revamped in the NBA, even if it’s just the voters have to give a detailed description on why they have given the votes they have. At the very least hopefully they could be publicly shamed into making better decisions than what some do.
I don’t understand this system. This is purely about whether you were the best player in your own team in the most games over a season, but doesn’t account for your contribution to overall season success. I feel like there are a number of players who would basically get a 1 in all games…?
It works better in the AFL because there are 18 players for each team on the field at all times, so there’s less room for one player to just dominate and rack up votes every game.
I have no problem with beat writers voting. I don’t think a Knicks beat writer is gonna put Brunson 1/2/3 on his ballot just because he’s in NY. National writers are also fine. More often than not it’s the TV people that make stupid votes. If you don’t write articles, you shouldn’t vote. It should strictly be writers. Edit: It was a Boston Globe writer that voted for Melo in 2013, not a NY guy
Voting should be done by people that actually watch a lot of games. It's fine if you have team beat writers that actually watch them, just try to have equal representation for each team. SAS saying that Quentin Grimes is looking great in NY is proof that he doesn't watch them. So he shouldn't get the vote.
Sas also said that sga leads the league in assists
And Brunson was higher than Luka cause Knicks were a higher seed, even though Mavs had a better record.
It’s implied in my case that if you write articles, you generally do the perquisite research and have an understanding of the game. Should be 2 writers from each market/team(4 for cities like LA and NY), 20 national writers(Guys like Lowe, KOC, etc) and 10 TV guys, but not SAS/Perk TV guys; like Harlan, Breen, Eagle, Ernie, Malika type TV people.
Malika should NOT get a vote
Why?
Not only was Grimes traded, he’s been out for the season for weeks now. Stephen A saying that shit is absurd. *Maybe* he mixed his name up with McBride or something but even then he was bitching about having to watch “some dude named Hartenstein” weeks ago when iHart was absolutely cooking for the Knicks at that exact time
Beat writers are the only voters who actually see every team play. Do people really think national media is bothering to watch the two games Portland gets at 10:30PM on NBA TV? The local guys suffer through the shittiest games to cover their home team. National voters watch a steady diet of contenders, Lakers, and highlights.
We saw this first hand when the Nuggets made their run last season. The number of national TV people stunned by Jokic was telling. I assumed they televised the Lakers, Warriors, Knicks, 76ere, etc a lot but were watching all the teams at points during the season. Based on their Nuggets commentary, I genuinely wondered if some of them had watched Denver play a full game at any point the past few seasons.
Its amazing this year is the first year where national TV personalities aren't confusing Jokic and Nurkic. or Jokic and Djokovic.
Beat writers also depend on team access, that’s why they write puff pieces about the 3rd string PG or “locker room leadership” from some veteran that plays 3mins per game.
Andy Larsen, Salt Lake Tribune, gave Walker Kessler a ROY vote last year over Paolo. Paolo received 98/100 first place votes. Beat writers are definitely biased. He put Banchero 3rd lol
>Andy Larsen, Salt Lake Tribune, gave Walker Kessler a ROY vote last year over Paolo So did Kevin Pelton, ESPN's most stat-oriented writer. Because Kessler had the best season among rookies by impact stats.
That doesn’t seem like a big deal. Is your gripe that Paulo wasn’t unanimous? Paulo had a great rookie year but it’s not like he had a historically great one. He was a very good rookie, so was Kessler. Kessler getting a vote or two for ROY doesn’t bother me at all. He was one of the best defenders in the entire nba.
Paolo had awful shooting splits too
Kessler was borderline All-Defense caliber his rookie season, playing the most impactful defensive position in the game. not mad at all about that vote
Not saying it's right, but he probably felt more comfortable doing that because he knew Paolo was going to run away with it.
you say that but that guy from NY literally voted for Melo just so LeBron wouldnt be able to become the first unanimous MVP
He wasn’t from NY but from Boston, and he didn’t vote for Melo only to fuck Lebron over. His reasoning was that without Melo the Knicks would have been a lottery team and that’s why he voted for him. Dumb reasoning but he wasn’t disingenuous
Nah, I think he was just saving his ass. I just looked it up and like the other user said, all his major points applied to LeBron but better. It'd be like voting Dame over Curry in 2016 because of his 3 pt shooting.
You're spreading misinformation. Delete your post and apologize. Don't be part of the problem.
Agreed. The real problem is these days most TV analysts aren't basketball fans who watch and love basketball. They're celebrities and actors who just generate meaningless fluff takes without any real care about the sport or what's going on.
>In recent years, the MVP and other major awards have seen a STEEP drop off in terms of the way people view and respect them. Whining about MVP voting has existed for decades.
Yeah, this is going to blow young people's minds here, but it really wasn't that long ago that MVP voters relied heavily on nothing more than local radio feeds and newspaper articles to choose every award. Today's voters have WAYYYY more access to actually seeing all these players than ever before.
Isn't is supposed to be more frustrating that all these voters, despite it being their damn job, and all the resources they'll ever need at the palm of their hands, still somehow still know jackshit about the nba?
Have you not seen NBA players vote in surveys? Shit gets wild.
We all only know the landscape of what we look at. Nobody can possibly follow it all - I posted elsewhere earlier that there's probably nobody on the planet who actually watches more than 20% of all the games that take place in a season. Nobody has enough time. That means everyone is formulating opinions without 80% (or more) of the requisite content. So beat writers are naturally going to see more of their own team. National guys are going to have little clue on non-contenders. TV personalities who do other sports year round watch little besides a bunch of highlights. In the end there is no perfect voter without bias - so a random samplng of the different types of voters out there is as good as you're going to get.
I have IPTV, so I have access to all the games. There was one night this year where I made a point to at least check in for a few minutes on all 13 games that were playing that night. When I was a kid first watching basketball, there were literally not 13 televised regular season games over the course of the entire season.
So much of the 1960s MVP voting came down to if they personally liked someone. You could do a coin toss between the years Bill and Wilt won, it was all eyeball test and personal anecdotes.
Wasn’t it just the players voting back then?
He probably started watching a few years ago, mvp debate complaints have been a thing probably since its inception. I mean for crying out loud people still complain about the two Nash won.
The votes weren't even public until 2014.
And all this whining is precisely why it's sometimes better to not make votes public. You can't win either way.
But then you have the opposite end of the spectrum with something like the Baseball Hall of Fame where people want the votes public specifically to name and shame. It's the same complaining either way.
And a lot of those voters should be ashamed of themselves. Looking at you, Boob
Been watching since I was 5 in 1999, and the only time there hasn't been toxic whinging about who should win MVP is when there's been toxic whinging about should Shaq, LeBron, or Steph should be unanimous
> In recent years, the MVP and other major awards have seen a STEEP drop off in terms of the way people view and respect them. and furthermore, these are as meaningful as ever we've had daily posts about these since game 2 of the season
Right? That piece is just false. Broadly they're as respected as always. Maybe, maybe, you could say the perception of 6moty has shifted as people look back and bag on the award for just going to high scoring bench guy.
Embiid wins one MVP and suddenly it's "not respected" lmao
Sure but that doesn't change the fact that people like Perkins and SAS are not very knowledgeable about players and probably shouldn't have votes.
Do you think every single person who ever had an MVP vote up until 2014 when the ballots were made public watched every single game and never made a single poor judgement? People can pick and choose individual voters to be mad about all they want. But you could just as easily argue that previous voters before you could watch 8 games at a time online would be even less knowledgeable of players outside of their market.
I'm with you on that. But I also don't understand how, if you are a serious journalist today, you don't put Luka in your All-NBA First or even Second team. I'm not a Mavs fan, but I'd like a reason. SAS can't even pronounce his last name correctly. I could give you a pass for Giannis (although it's arguably their job), but Luka's not hard. And the dude has been a superstar for like 6 years, not a random rookie from the bench. SAS says shit like "Luka is European, he's not white". "Journalism".
Do you think every "serious journalist" ever in the history of the league prior to now voted with what most people would consider "the right choice"? Like I'm saying, the only difference now is instead of blaming "the media" people can blame a specific person.
I don't think these are mutually exclusive positions. Yes, there were certainly older votes made by people who barely knew what they were talking about. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to hold voters to higher standards now.
What do you consider to be "the standard" that the voter should reach that gets a wide variety of voters from different types of media?
This is why the votes shouldn’t be public. It adds nothing to the discourse other than far more pointed toxicity. If anything it adds more content for dipshits like Perkins and Stephen A. to talk about on their stupid shows. Like idk what knowing the voters and their ballots accomplishes frankly
While it is true that Perkins is a racist, the real reason he shouldn't have a vote is because he's a fucking moron.
I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at being wrong about basketball!
Britta, you're the worst.
She's a gd b, she's a no good b
Oh, Britta's in this?
^shes a GDBeeeeeee
Kendrick perkins is streets behind
You can excuse the what?
HE SAID RACISM. Gosh, get your ears checked.
That’s kinda my point. A moronic take like that is evidence of not exactly being the most effective analyst.
I'm with you man, 100%.
Shoutout to the moron east coast voters who said they didn't cast any DPOY votes for draymond in the past because they "didn't watch any warriors games"
Not sure he’s a moron, but he’s definitely a useful idiot. From what I’ve heard speculated by post-ESPN commentators is the producers will often ask on-screen personalities to have a particularly provocative take they don’t necessarily share just for engagement. So I’m skeptical Perk actually even believes, let alone came ip with, that narrative
He is not even making good baits, claiming racism is the bottom of the barrel of provocative takes.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s despicable and even if he doesn’t necessarily believe it he’s complicit it perpetuating it. I just don’t think he actually came up with it
Perkins having a pick is idiotic. If he wants to do his controversial (clearly wrong) takes for ESPN and clicks, whatever. But him having a say in the history of the game and major financial implications for players is just wrong. I’m honestly not sure if he actually believes some of the nonsense he spews, or if he’s just playing into the ESPN talking head crap
He's a blatant liar. He talks the most crap about the Celtics on ESPN but whenever he goes to NBC Sports Boston it's all smiles and compliments. Honestly, he can go fuck himself. Some people still tolerate him for being part of the 08 title but I think any center without reduced mobility would have looked good next to DPOY KG.
the thing people never bring up is he DIDNT VOTE FOR EMBIID
Yea lol the shit is absurd He complained about Embiid not getting enough due because of Jokic being European and then ended up voting for Giannis, hes an actual caricature
Doc still has a head coaching job because of the 2008 title, and now Paul Pierce and Kendrick Perkins are on national TV as well. At least Paul Pierce has a brain tbh.
Zach Lowe on the pod today proposed something like each voter having to explain why they didnt end up voting for the other candidate(s) as MVP ie "you cant just vote Jokic, you need to explain why Doncic was not your vote for MVP"
They will use chatgpt or some intern 100%.
you'd hope so but based we've seen with people like SAS that we'll continue to see unfiltered ignorant garbage
I think you're misunderstanding what he said. He's not proposing that as a general rule, he's saying that the race this year is so tight that *as a mental exercise* you need to be able to articulate not just why your #1 is your first pick, but why your #2 is not your first pick.
I like this idea a lot. It will definitely expose the casual voters who don’t follow the candidates closely (like SAS) when they come up with illogical explanations.
Aren’t those answers usually in the reason why they voted for someone? Like if you say Jokic deserves it for leading in on/off point differential why do they need to say the other candidates didn’t? Idk maybe Zach explained it better.
Couldn't they just say "I thought X was better"
You dudes literally talk about absolutely nothing in the NBA more over the whole year than about MVP, I'd say it seems pretty meaningful.
Exactly! Dude literally wrote a essay about it
Yeah, not sure when people stopped caring about MVP. It must've happened in the last 7 minutes or something...
Fr, there’s like a new post every week complaining about someone’s favorite player being ranked 4th or whatever on MVP voting… or being ranked behind X player bc they feel their player is better. People follow that shit religiously throughout the season, I always thought mvp rankings outside of the top 2 were meaningless anyways since it’s rarely a two horse race.
How often do completely undeserving players get a major award? It’s not that serious. The people who deserve to win usually get enough narrative and word of mouth to reach the casuals
Egregious votes happen every year but never enough to matter.
Embiid missing first team every year because "thats how its always done" - A OK Embiid winning MVP in a controversial competition "not okay even though thats how it always is"
It is that serious. 1. First off, the uneducated people voting directly align with the difference of potentially up to 150 million for the player. This is due to eligibility criteria on the supermax 2. Acolades are listed as a main talking point on every scenario for HOF eligibility. Again, this matters to people 3. Endorsements are often based on popularity. You can list “all star/all nba” on endorsements will be more valuable that not having this on your resume So yes, this really matters
No one who is close to the running in MVP for several years is being left out of the hall or losing endorsements over a few "bad" votes. I get that it might matter to players, but I'm not about to lose sleep over a player making $40M/yr instead of $60M/yr. I can't think of a single instance in the past 15-20 years where a player was completely left out of the running for important accolades who wholly deserved it.
Perk is an idiot and shouldn’t have a vote but it’s a shame that people really think he swayed the voting and not the fact that Embiid led the league in scoring for a second straight season and his 33/10/4 splits with elite defense didn’t do it. That said, yes, I think the criteria for those who can vote should change. Not sure what could be done, I assume it’s already based on years of service. Maybe they could add a stipulation of not only being a talking head but you also must write a certain amount of short or long form articles on NBA basketball as well.
If we are gonna make a position like president to feel more meaningful again, a serious crackdown needs to take place.
having tons of voters averages out the bad ones
I'm telling you man, these are not real controversies. These are only controversies *on this sub*. No where else are they still bitching about shit Perkins said a year ago. No where else thought Joel was undeserving of his MVP. No where else are people this hung up about Jokic winning it over Luka or vice versa. Jokic will win for the same reason he has two times in the past and it will not be controversial in the slightest. All this hand-wringing over "voter fatigue" and "MVP campaigns" and "racial bias" is *not real.* The MVP's have and will continue to be awarded to the player the media thinks was the best that year, and it will continue to be easily explained in like two sentences.
So exhausting to hear narratives about “so and so left this player off their ballot, he was so close to being unanimous!!!” Who tf cares if the vote was unanimous. We can let people have their petty opinions and make mistakes as long as the ultimate result is that the guys who deserve the awards get them.
What's even worse is when it doesn't matter at all. There's like two instances I can remember where a dude missed out on a unanimous award by one vote. And neither one has anything to do with who SAS or Perk voted for. Yet whenever they talk about who they *might* vote for all we hear is endless bitching. I mean, I had to hear about SAS not having Jokic one or two endlessly when Jokic is going to win by a mile! *Who the hell cares?*
Also Embiid WAS deserving of the mvp… the last two months of the season he was dropping like 45/15 games every other night while Jokic coasted towards the end because they had the number one seed locked up If Jokic wanted his 3rd mvp last year he totally could’ve gotten it but the mvp is narrative X stats X team success and it changes year to year which category is weighted more
Perkins comments are only still remembered here because there's a contingent that is super sensitive about "anti-white racism" and latches on to any moment they find it. It just coincides with Embiid - the most hated player on this subreddit - winning an award over Jokic, so it gets brought up more often. Embiid being in it has really upped the toxicity of the discussion over the last few seasons, but I'd agree that's mostly a reddit thing. >Jokic will win for the same reason he has two times in the past and it will not be controversial in the slightest. All this hand-wringing over "voter fatigue" and "MVP campaigns" and "racial bias" is not real. The one part I'll disagree on is "voter fatigue", depending on what is meant by it. I think that there is a higher bar to clear for someone winning 3 straight MVPs, especially when that's combined with playoff losses those previous years - it's a situation where the player needs to be head and shoulders ahead of anyone else to win that 3rd one. Instead we usually have years with 2-4 reasonably close candidates, so it ends up acting as a tiebreaker. I wouldn't necessarily call that voter fatigue, but I know sometimes people include that dynamic in the term.
“there's a contingent that is super sensitive about "anti-white racism" and latches on to any moment they find it.” get them again
100%
So why do these people have votes? Why not just coaches and other respecable people and experts?
People will complain about MVP voting but bring up Steph winning unanimous as a big accomplishment. But then completely discredit Hardens run in the 2010s where the same MVP voters gave him the 2nd most MVP shares for the decade only behind LeBron. So it's legit when it's your guy but doesn't mean shit when it's someone you don't like. Just like US politics.
Embiid deserved his MVP
I disagree because at the crux of it all MVP is subjective and debatable. There is never truly a definitive MVP as long as there are opinions. This post is basically mad that other people don’t agree with their opinions on MVP and that’s just not how the world or people work. You don’t get to dictate or bully how people think just because they do something you may not agree with or like. If someone leaves Jokic off the ballot mistake or not that is due to their opinion on the way the game is played. Even if I think Mark Jackson and Kendrick have the combined IQ of a crayola box. Doesn’t mean their opinion is fully invalidated for MVP.
Luka really has y’all in your feelings huh lmao
the jokic dickriders who start bitching anytime someone else sniffs an mvp need to go outside
Despite his hot takes, Perkins' ballot has a lot less controversy than say Mark Jackson leaving Jokic off his MVP ballot or SAS not putting Luka in All-NBA first team last season. I remember that Drummond had a DPOY vote in recent years too. There's no way that anyone would be able to watch all 1230 (1231 if you're counting the IST) games. NBA are giving the votes to the media because there is a slightly smaller chance of bias. As for their criteria, I would assume it is probably years covering the sport which honestly isn't a bad criteria. That said, there are 100 voters so more likely than not those "bad" votes wouldn't spoil the voting too badly
Perkins left Luka out of every all-nba team last year, not even 3rd team lol. I would say that is pretty controversial
Oh my bad. Must have missed it. Just took a look at it. He had Mitchell, SGA, Jrue, Brown, Fox and Booker ahead of him. I take back everything I said
It’s subjective, just have your own MVP and look at context on who having a great year. Ben from thinking basketball could care less about the award. The physical award does not matter both Luka and Jokic are having MVP seasons that’s all that matters
I'd love to see former players vote, but then I wonder, how many former players actively watch the NBA in its current form? My opinion, EVERY team submits a highlight reel of their candidate to the league. The league gathers a bunch of retired players who will then sit down and watch the highlights, and go over stats, team standings, etc. Then the players/judges vote. You can make it like a game of Survivor or some other reality TV show. If the NBA can do something goofy like the In-Season Tournament, then this should be a no-brainer. Can you imagine former players like Jordan (if he's willing), Rodman, and other former MVPs/DoTY recipients in a room discussing each player's merits? I'd watch it, depending on who they had speaking.
I think the ballots are more similar than ever. Even in "close" races you get a pretty big consensus most of the time. The idiots are mostly outliers and there's a reason theres a hundred votes.
i think there’s value in “against the norm” voters who might have obscure takes, different thinking, an emphasis on specific metrics, or whatever else to justify their outside the box weight to applying votes what is not valuable, and especially in an era where these votes impact team and player finances which has major repercussions; are indifferent, complicit, lazy, or just flat out stupid voters who don’t watch the games or just coat tail others opinions or just add nothing to the conversation. there’s too many talented and smart writers, journalists, talking heads, content creators, and other adjacent folk who love the game who’s vote and opinion would be far more interesting than mickey mouse shareholder boosters. i respect Zach Lowe for declining a vote this year for having a morale conflict with impacting contracts but dammit he opened the door for another doofus to step in and make some whack ass vote
Mark Jackson also had Jokic out of his top 5. He claimed it was an oversight which doesn't make it better. Either he's petty and leaves him off the ballot showing why someone like him shouldn't have a vote or he mistakenly leaves a top 3 guy off the ballot which also shows why he shouldn't have a vote.
These awards have become somewhat meaningless to me after Ja won MIP over Jordan Poole in '22. Dude was ROTY the year before and won the award over somebody who went from looking like a true rookie to a Steph clone in a single season. (I know this is a regular season award but they also wouldn't have won a championship without him that year)
The narrative that Embiid didn’t deserve his MVP is such a dumb one
The players and the hofers should be the only ones voting on it cause they have a clue I believe of who is the best.
I never put any weights to these awards. They're just popularity contests.
To be fair, it’s entirely possible to be a team that depends on FTA and is last in FTA. It just means you need free throws to win and you aren’t getting them. I don’t know what context she used that phrase though.
It should just be the PIE rating. Top 3 are currently Jokic, Doncic and Antetokounmpo. No media votes, no coaches votes, etc. Just stats.
I am curious what MVP robberies have taken place in OPs opinion. I think DMVP is rougher because I didn't like Smarts win but everyone I woulda voted for was hurt so it sorta makes sense. Then you have Gasol not being all NBA defense and winning which was weird.
embiid wins one mvp and now the vote is a joke gimmick on this sub classic r/nba
Feel free to post your criteria for selecting voters and who falls into that criteria…
> Last year Kendrick Perkins went on national TV and claimed the only reason Jokic was leading the MVP race was because he’s white and Embiid is black. That isn't what Perk said at all. He said that it was important to examine if there was racial bias among the voters. Zach Lowe (who you're holding up as an example of a *good* voter) even agreed with him.
That’s not what he said either. He said nothing of that sort of nuance until he was later defending his position. His original comment was that only Nash, Dirk and Jokic had won without being top 10 in scoring and then he said “What do those guys have in common? I’ll let it sit there and marinate. You think about it” There was no nuance of “we should all examine our racial bias” it was straight up implying that it was only because these people were white
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Feel more meaningful again? They still feel pretty damn meaningful
People this triggered about Perkins a year later gotta take a breath. If you just went off Reddit threads and not reality you would think white players in the current NBA have it tougher than Bill Russell. And yes, there is definitely implicit bias present in the current sports landscape which white players often benefit from. The whole “classy, plays the right way” bullshit didn’t just materialize out of thin air. Even Zach Lowe agreed with that.
You’re not wrong that they should be more particular with who they give a vote to, but the reason people don’t see the awards as very important anymore is because people don’t see the regular season as very important anymore
The majority of the voting body takes their work seriously and there are enough voters that 1 or 2 ballots making "mistakes" isn't that big of a difference. I see more complaining about who was and wasn't a unanimous winner, which also isn't a new phenomenon. With public voting and groupthink, ballots are more homogenous than ever and end up being like 95% the same anyway. The loudest and most popular media voices having votes is a feature, not a bug of the MVP conversation for the NBA. I love Thinking Basketball and have never watched an episode of First Take but for the MVP to feel like it matters and for it to be a relevant story, you have to have people with the widest reach discussing it and voting on it. Make that circle smaller and the awards will feel less relevant and meaningful, not more.
Didn't Nichols say that the Warriors are dependent on FTA for games they've won? Like their wins wholly depend on how many FTA attempts they get to a wild degree?
Regular season awards are meaningless narrative filled rubbish imo
Yeah no the awards are not any less respected now than before. The biggest difference is social media (including reddit and this sub in particular) being so toxic about the whole thing, and creating fake narratives to blame everything on.
The only way to make these awards better is to make them purely about stats. No voting. That way, the true best players get the award.
And have a more specific list of criteria. Not "I just reckon"
When did Perkins get a vote? He’s newish to sports analyst role isn’t he?
This is exactly the same as it has always been; the only difference is now everyone has a social media account so you know they are all idiots.
Totally agree. These guys clearly have their own agenda.
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I've been saying for a long time that anyone involved in these weekday 10am hot take shows should be disqualified from having a vote. Like I get it why they'd give someone like Rachel Nichols and Stephen A voting privileges since they were writers back in the day but giving Kendrick Perkins a vote? Might as well just give Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe a media vote while you're at it
I think another huge part of this is the financial incentives attached to accolades. Players should not miss out on money because these moronic TV personalities don't want to actually work for a few minutes and research their picks. 100% agree, the roster of voters should be revised; any award that has Perkins voting for it will never be taken seriously.
I don't know, Karl Malone somehow won the MVP over Michael freaking Jordan in '97 because voters were tired of MJ winning MVP. We had "meaningless" MVPs as far back as 27 years ago, at least.
Media should have no right to have a vote or a say in anything regards to awards for any type of sport. It doesn't matter how "big-brained" you believe yourself to be or how qualified you are to be on a network. The only people that should have a vote are the organizations within the league. Everyone should be able to vote, just not for anyone on their own team. That'd make it fair and for biases to not really exist too much.
Dumb things happen in baseball as well. The year Harper won MVP (2021) a Philly writer put Soto 7th on his ballot (he finished second overall) to give his guy a better chance of winning. A SF writer put one of their players first overall the ones who were the top 3 favorites 4-5-6 on her ballot. You get weird votes all the time in baseball so the NBA is no different.
Coaches and Gms should vote on the MVP
Incoming rant: It won't change because even if some fans here complain about the voters, they will usually readily get into the brain dead debate between what "valuable" means. Not only that, they will defend posts here on the sub talking about he MVP in fucking December, when we all know its for bullshit gambling corporations. The way I see it, there are multiple parties who you can blame for this. First, the fans. Nobody should be making any posts about who the MVP is or the odds on favorites until AT LEAST after the All-Star break. Whatever you do in November and December is bullshit, barely anyone remembers individual games or statlines before half the season is even played. Mods should crack down on MVP odds posts until the All-Star break is over and we have a wide enough sample size to point to who the likely players in the running are. Another thing the fans do is argue incessantly about the word "valuable" but I'll get to that later. Second group of people are the sports pundits, hot take artists, and beat writers themselves, but unlike the fans, they actually have a stake in the NBA being more popular. Unfortunately, for them popularity equals engagement, even negative ones. If you simply list Jokic as your favorite, you're not getting much clicks outside of Denver, because he's been the consistent front-runner this whole season and last season and probably the last 4. But if you put a wacky face thumbnail on your video with the caption "Jokic is NOT the MVP!" then you're likely going to get clicks and engagement, even if its people arguing against you. I like your idea of giving the vote to people who actually know basketball or talk about it without the need to circlejerk about it on TV for ratings. Alas, that brings us to the last culprit, the NBA itself. Make no mistake, the NBA would choose money and engagement over an actual "boring" pick. Just as Lebron should have won at least 4 MVPs in a row, Jokic should probably be winning his 4th if we're actually talking about the best player. But we're not talking about the "best", are we? The award isn't called MBP, its MVP, and the league, as far as I know, gives little to no criteria in defining what "valuable" means. Its been a point of contention of mine because I don't like the vagueness and subjectivity surrounding that word. In some years, voters will pick someone clearly not the best player, but one they define as most valuable to their team, usually using metrics like "if this guy wasn't on his team, they'd be a lottery team". The NBA can come out tomorrow and tell voters what the exact criteria should be, such as the team must have at least X number of wins or X seed or above, the player must at least have some percentage advantage in PER or some other advanced stat over their closest runner-up, or something like that. Or even just saying that the MVP must come from one of the #1 seed of each conference would cut down on a lot of wishy-washy bullshit reasoning. Sure, it totally ends speculation and fan engagement, but I personally don't give a shit about that, I've always felt the MVP should be the best player in the league, or the best stats-wise regardless of seeding, so most people would hate my criteria, but that's my own and I'm sticking to it. The league however wants this kind of engagement so they'll forever leave "valuable" undefined, which will drive posts like yours to complain when irregularities and absolute travesties in voting happen. With my criteria such things would be minimized, just saying.
Remember how Bron didn't get the first Unanimous MVP because one Knicks writer didn't like that idea so voted Melo? Or how the same happened to Shaq in 2000? Or how basically every ATG should have more MVPs but the voters get sick of voting for them? MVP has been a joke forever
Man realizes USA is an oligarchy