NBA Awards are awesome, aren’t they? They give credit to those who put in the most work on the hardwood and overall provided a nice incentive for all the players, which is such a great concept. It’s too bad the system is flaming garbage. They do not revolve around objectivity and instead revolve around the extremely inconsistent perspective of NBA writers and analysts everywhere; they are merely people looking for the better story and succumbing to huge mishaps.

For my first example, I would like to offer up Avery Bradley, a well-known guard defender who is feared. There is a legitimate argument to be made that he is the most fierce defender of the guard positions after Tony Allen. What about empirical stats? The Celtics allowed their opponents to get an average of 13.9 points off of second chance points. That is ranked a “nice whole” 27 out of 30 teams in the NBA. The Celtics also allowed 43.2 points in the paint per game. These clearly emphasize the fact that they had a severe dearth on defense in terms of center and power forward presence.

Yet the Celtics somehow earned a commendable defensive rating of 105.5. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the absolute atrocity that was our point guard. Bradley, by himself, was able to shut down most elite guards that the Celtics played with great success. Two-time MVP Stephen Curry was guarded mostly by Bradley when he came to Boston and ended up with a lackluster 16 points on a 7 out of 20 shooting.

So, I pronounced my love for Bradley’s game, now what? Well, as I broke down above, he is one of the league’s premier defenders. And he didn’t make any of the All Defensive Teams. None. And look, if the reasoning was sound, I’d forgive everything. But Chris Broussard, one of the voters, said in an interview,  “Avery Bradley [was] a fantastic defender, but didn’t Devin Booker put 70 on him?” This is a seemingly sound opinion, but there is a slight detail he missed. Bradley did not play in that game. That’s right, one of the voters did not vote for Bradley because he did not realize Bradley was not playing in the game where Booker scored 70 points. In fact, during the game that both Bradley and Booker were on the floor, Bradley held Booker to only 16 points. Are we really going to let these NBA “aficionados” define the coveted awards?

One can certainly harken this rant up to my love for the Celtics. So instead, let us then divulge into a more objective situation. Remember the days Derrick Rose was an MVP candidate? I barely do myself, as it feels like a lifetime ago. This was when he became the youngest MVP in NBA history. Although he played an exceptional game for his age, it was an award he did not deserve, and due to “voter fatigue,” Lebron James was snubbed. Ignoring the pseudo context of age among other perimeters, simply look at these statistics. Player A averaged 25 points per game, 7.7 assists, 1 steal, 4.1 rebounds, and had a team that won 62 games. Not too bad at all. Player B, however, averaged 26.7 points per game, 7 assists, 1.7 steals, 7.5 rebounds, and led their team to 58 wins. Considering that Player B also has higher shooting percentages and advanced statistics, there is no question who was the better player. Player B was James. But no, he didn’t win the award because of the trend that these NBA “analysts” have called voter fatigue. James won the MVP two years in a row prior, so the voters were quite simply “tired” of voting for him over and over again.
If these NBA awards were arbitrary with no standing anywhere, I wouldn’t mind. The problem lies in what these awards impact. A player can get more money out of their contract and have a higher place in the Hall of Fame induction process with more of these awards. Fiscally and historically, these awards matter, so let us cut out the middle men and start anew with a separate committee that are voted on by the players themselves.