The NBA Is Failing You But Won’t Admit It

The NBA MVP race is bias, sorry Giannis. ✅ Click http://sorare.pxf.io/ALLDAYW to join my Sorare NBA League today and win a $100 NBA Store Gift Card for my Limited Contender Competition.

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The MVP race this year is down to Jokic, Giannis, and Embiid, deja vu, and each have a legitimate case.

Now Kendrick said that one of the main reasons Jokic is winning MVP this year is because he’s white and that a majority of the voters are white. Reddick countered, Perkins devolved into

Since 1980, there’s only been 1 person to win MVP 3 times in a row and that’s Larry Bird. Jokic would be the second. Now lemme point out the obvious, yes both are white. **Now is it coincidence or is there something deeper?**

The NBA awards are chosen by 100 panelists of sportswriters and broadcasters from all over the United States and Canada plus a fan vote added in 2017. While the panel does change from year to year, last year there were 64 white voters, so yes a majority, in a league that’s made up of 73% of black players.

Random narratives get pushed all the time. And if you think that’s just Stephen A. Smith saying for views and that he isn’t impacting the vote, nope you’re wrong cause he’s a voter.

Convenient to stop at 1990 because Magic won in MVP in 1987, 1989, and 1990 while not being top 10 in scoring and Magic’s black. Perk really thought he was doing something there, but ESPN backtracked his statement saying it’s not what Perkins implied, that it’s not 80% white. Yeah, it’s 65% so ESPN did some nasty work here. But let’s take a look at the claim because it’s not as clear cut.

Last year there were 64 white voters. 70% chose jokic (45), 30% chose a non white player (19)
36 non white voters. 55% chose jokic (20), 45% chose a non white player (16) so Jokic was the majority, but from a clear majority versus near middle there is a bit of a discrepancy.

There isn’t always racial bias necessarily. 2 years ago there wasn’t as much variation. There were 63 white voters of which 90.5% chose Jokic and of the non-white voters, 92% chose Jokic. Its interesting that the NBA did switch out 27 voters from 2021 to 2022, 16 white voters and 11 non-white voters so maybe they don’t want a static lists for these very reasons.

And all this stems from a wish washy criteria because there’s no set criteria.

So Jokic is not only breaking voter fatigue, he’s already broken the supposed winning criteria by winning MVP last year as the 6th seed.

How you finish the season is also important. Symbolically, it’s about making a push. By this point of the season, it’s usually a 3-4 player race. There can be a clear cut favorite, but players can either close the distance or increase the distance and come out on top. But the real reason why the finish is important is because of recency bias.

And all the teams have a different amount of nationally televised games and different markets. Since the panel is made up of sportswriters and broadcasters who literally cover topics that will get more attention, meaning they will watch certain teams and players more.

The mere exposure effect is our tendency to develop a preference for something merely due to being familiar with it. This year the number of nationally Televise games for the MVP candidates was similar, but that’s not always the case. So if we compare the number of national tv games last year, the Bucks had 25, the Sixers had 16, the Nuggets had 14. And what about other candidates that wouldn’t get any air time.

My issue with this current race isn’t that Jokic is winning it this year, because he’s the best offensive player in the league on the best team in the league record wise right now, my issue was if you use this argument for him this year, then why did he win last year ****when someone else *ahem Giannis* had a similar argument last year being the best player on a #1 seed while being 2nd or 3rd offensively and 2nd or 3rd defensively in the entire league.

Take a look at Kobe Bryant’s vote tally. He finished fourth overall and yet he was second in first-place votes with 22, six more than LeBron James, who finished third in first-place votes. He had the fewest amount of second-place votes with only 11, the fewest amount of third-place votes with 18 and the highest total of fifth-place votes with 30. How can the same person have 22 first-place votes and 30 fifth-place votes? It’s easy. There are a lot of writers and broadcasters who just couldn’t stand him and each voter had a whole bunch of different criteria. It’s literally personal.

Institute a criteria with weighted averages in categories. Of course MVP is still relative to the competition, but I believe having standardized weights on team success, individual performance, and difficulty level in achieving would help this process where really no one knows what’s going on. It would help fans and media members, just the right discourse on a very important award.