It seems like everytime I turn around someone is explaining a player getting an award over someone else because "Player A contributed more to the team. Player B just put up great stats on a horrible team." Does that reasoning actually make Player A better? With the MVP the reasoning for Steve Nash winning is because he made the team that much more better, while players like LeBron and Kobe put up great stats on mediocre teams. Shawn Marion gets All-NBA Third team over PP because Marion was part of a system that worked. Ben Wallace wins Defensive Player of the Year because he was the anchor on a great defensive team, whereas Bruce Bowen and Artest are better man on man defenders. The NBA is trying to get the younger stars noticed, but it is those younger stars (seemingly) that are on the mediocre teams and thus get no recognition in post-season awards. Does anyone else see this pattern or is it just me?
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting sunsfan1357:</div><div class="quote_post">It seems like everytime I turn around someone is explaining a player getting an award over someone else because "Player A contributed more to the team. Player B just put up great stats on a horrible team." Does that reasoning actually make Player A better? With the MVP the reasoning for Steve Nash winning is because he made the team that much more better, while players like LeBron and Kobe put up great stats on mediocre teams. Shawn Marion gets All-NBA Third team over PP because Marion was part of a system that worked. Ben Wallace wins Defensive Player of the Year because he was the anchor on a great defensive team, whereas Bruce Bowen and Artest are better man on man defenders. The NBA is trying to get the younger stars noticed, but it is those younger stars (seemingly) that are on the mediocre teams and thus get no recognition in post-season awards. Does anyone else see this pattern or is it just me?</div> Wow... a sunsfan sighting... Anyway, I definitely see a pattern, or rather, lackthereof. There just isn't really a set of guidelines as to what the awards are based on. I know some of the local guys in Memphis who vote for various NBA awards, and they all have different logic. Some favor players from winning teams, some favor great stats, and some want a little bit of both. The NBA should come out with a definite criteria, because it bugs the hell out of me seeing Ben Wallace win Defensive Player of the Year while Shane Battier doesn't even get Second Team consideration. Then you've got the one moron who gave Rasheed Wallace a first team vote on this year's All-NBA team. That really screws up the system. Just because he wanted to make his little anonymous statement, a guy like Pau Gasol was potentially cut short of the vote he needed to make one of the teams. Basically, I guess my point is that there's no consistency in the criteria. It's too vague and subjective. [/endrant]
If there was a clearly defined set of rules for these awards, there would be no need for voting. You could just feed the relevant data to a computer, and it would spit out the winners. Would be kind of boring, don't you think? The fact is, there's no strict criteria for who the best players are. The concept of "best player(s)" is fuzzy and imperfect to begin with. The only thing they can do is have well-informed basketball experts do the voting. But you'd probably find a lot of variation there as well.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting durvasa:</div><div class="quote_post">If there was a clearly defined set of rules for these awards, there would be no need for voting. You could just feed the relevant data to a computer, and it would spit out the winners. Would be kind of boring, don't you think? The fact is, there's no strict criteria for who the best players are. The concept of "best player(s)" is fuzzy and imperfect to begin with. The only thing they can do is have well-informed basketball experts do the voting. But you'd probably find a lot of variation there as well.</div> I really don't see any problems whatsoever with laying down some general guidelines on whether it's an award for the player who is the most valuable to his team or the player who had the most impressive individual season. If consistency is boring, then I guess that it'd be boring. Is it really worth it to have an inaccurate but entertaining voting process? Besides, even if you define it as individual success, there will still be varying opinions. It would just limit the variety of opinions, which could be a good thing. You wouldn't have people giving votes to guys like Rasheed Wallace for the NBA First Team.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Voodoo Child:</div><div class="quote_post">I really don't see any problems whatsoever with laying down some general guidelines on whether it's an award for the player who is the most valuable to his team or the player who had the most impressive individual season. If consistency is boring, then I guess that it'd be boring. Is it really worth it to have an inaccurate but entertaining voting process? Besides, even if you define it as individual success, there will still be varying opinions. It would just limit the variety of opinions, which could be a good thing. You wouldn't have people giving votes to guys like Rasheed Wallace for the NBA First Team.</div> I think it's understood that the awards are given to players based on "individual success". But people interpret that in different ways. Some think only individual boxscore stats are relevant. Others feel that those stats don't fully capture a player's worth (which is true, to an extent), and so they also factor in team success as a proxy for those uncaptured intangibles. I don't think that's unreasonable. The problem, then, becomes defining the extent to which team success should be factored in. There's no simple, objective way to do it which everyone could agree with. And if the criteria is refined too much, we might as well just use a computer to spit out the results.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting durvasa:</div><div class="quote_post">I think it's understood that the awards are given to players based on "individual success". But people interpret that in different ways. Some think only individual boxscore stats are relevant. Others feel that those stats don't fully capture a player's worth (which is true, to an extent), and so they also factor in team success as a proxy for those uncaptured intangibles. I don't think that's unreasonable. The problem, then, becomes defining the extent to which team success should be factored in. There's no simple, objective way to do it which everyone could agree with. And if the criteria is refined too much, we might as well just use a computer to spit out the results.</div> Team success isn't necessarily a reflection of an individual's talent though. I can understand players getting recognition for making their teammates better, but that's not necessarily what's happening here. Not every player on a good team makes his teammates better, and yet that seems to be assumed in cases like Rasheed Wallace's where he was named an All-Star and given a first team vote just because the team he played on. I think statistics can be relied on to an extent to measure how a player impacts his team, through examining assists, effective five man units, etc. So if we eliminated this bogus 'team success' explanation for voting for awards, there would still be a lot of room open for opinions and wouldn't have to 'just use a computer spit out the results.' The players like Jason Kidd who genuinely make their teammates better would still get recognition but so would players like Garnett who had amazing seasons but played on mediocre teams.
Most writers voting on the award are going to interpret the definition of MVP, based on who they want to vote for. These writers make a living off being biased and controversial, so I wouldn't expect them to vote any differently. We've all watched an episode of Cold Pizza, you have sensationalist writers like Woody Paige and Skip Bayless voting for these awards.
Yea, but with the winning thing, it's also because of things like when someone like Ricky Davis averaged 20-5-5 on Cleveland, but it really didn't do much for the team. Or when Jalen Rose that same year had some nice numbers on the Bulls. You can't reward that over someone with less impressive statistical production, but is in a team that's good and doesn't need them to do everything and have the nice numbers, but not win.
