In a break with tradition, I am casting my NBA awards ballot after the 81st game, not the 82nd. It’s a rarity, but this season I will not hem and haw and sleep on it until the afternoon after the final day of the season. You’re welcome. I have been an official NBA postseason awards voter for nearly a decade, and it would have been longer if not for a rule at the Associated Press, where I worked from 1987-2005, forbidding
Transparency is a two-way street. For years, NBA media members – echoing the sentiments of its passionate fan base – wanted more transparency from Commissioner David Stern and his executive staff. Whether it was a lottery drawing, a suspension in the playoffs or a referee scandal, folks felt like they were entitled to an explanation. And they were. Stern grudgingly came around. He arranged for the media to meet with referees prior to the season about rules changes. He allowed the media
One of my favorite factoids involving NBA awards goes back to the ’50s and ’60s when the two premier legends in the history of pro basketball were dominating the game. Wilt Chamberlain was a mythical character – a combination of Paul Bunyan, Jack in the Beanstalk and the Incredible Hulk. Bill Russell was the ultimate winner — 11 championships in 13 seasons. Yes, I believe Michael Jordan is the best player ever, but Wilt and Russell were bigger than life and their legend
Now for the annual post-season awards no one else has, by whatever means necessary. Kill this page if you’re looking for the Blue Plate Special featured everywhere else with Michael Carter-Williams as Rookie of the Year, Gregg Popovich as best coach, DeMar DeRozan as Most Improved, Joakim Noah as Defensive Player of the Year, etc. All are deserving… but it’s not as if the other candidates are chopped liver, as it seems these days when everyone compares picks over the internet and—
When the Pelicans gave Tyreke Evans a four-year, $44 million dollar offer sheet last summer, fans and analysts alike were skeptical of whether Evans had earned that deal. After several years of franchise turmoil in Sacramento, Evans’ morale was at an all time low. The former Rookie of the Year had regressed from a prolific star in the making to a streaky enigma on one of the league’s worst teams. Committing near-max money to Evans looked like a gross miscalculation by a New
The ambiguity of the word “valuable” has always been a sticking point for MVP voters at the end of the year. Does the MVP award belong to the best player, or the player who’s most integral to his team’s success? [Read more…]
Martin Luther King Day is more than a day of celebration and reflection for the NBA, which probably has done more positive things for race relations than any other sport in the Civil Rights Era. It also has become the unofficial midway point of the season. By the completion of Monday’s action, more than half of the league’s 30 teams will have played half their games. With that in mind, we present our midseason awards with this reminder from the bookie of hopeless
Last month, while I was working on my Nick Young feature, I asked Wizards guard John Wall what he thought about two of his former teammates’ divergent yet equally successful paths to relevance in the NBA. At the time, of course, Young was enjoying the hottest and most efficient scoring tear of his professional career. Meanwhile, Jordan Crawford, who had essentially replaced Young as Washington’s volume scorer in 2012, had reinvented himself as a facilitating point guard with the Boston Celtics.