The NBA awards voting is always a topic of controversy among fans and players but this time things took a different dimension. The suspension of the league in March opened the door to more narratives than the ones we had before the shutdown. Now a lot of people are criticizing voters for giving the 2020 MVP award to Giannis Antetokounmpo, even though he was the best player in the league during the regular season and his Milwaukee Bucks the best team.
That is the most normal case of all. If you take a look at how some people voted for the awards, things could get very disturbing. Maria Taylor didn’t vote for Anthony Davis for any of the All-NBA teams and everybody attacked her. Now fans have discovered something curious about The Ringer’s Bill Simmons.
The analyst had Dallas Mavericks young guard Luka Doncic above James Harden of the Houston Rockets on his MVP ballot, putting Luka in 5th position, behind Giannis, LeBron, Kawhi and Jokic, respectively.
Things get wrong when you see Simmons’ ballot for the All-NBA teams. He had Harden on 1st-Team All-NBA and Luka on the 2nd team, something more than questionable. This is why the voting has been receiving plenty of bad comments over the past couple of years. Media members don’t seem to be sure of what they want to see in a player or a team, what they value more about a baller and what makes them worthy of these awards.
This year we saw a lot of these cases, starting with someone voting for Zion Williamson as Rookie of the Year, preventing Ja Morant from being selected unanimously. The Taylor case is another example and now Simmons has done the same. The league needs to figure this out because we see crazier things every year.
