NBA Awards and the Defensive Player of the Year Bias...

It’s the first week of the NBA playoffs and that means it’s season awards time.  Well, individual awards that is.  The big team award won’t happen until mid-June when the Champ is crowned.  Obviously that is the most important “award” in hoops, but the individual awards have their place too, they are a matter of historical reference.  But as with all awards they conjure up endless debate because there are so many ways to look at it, and really, all of this stuff is just a matter of opinion anyway right?

Okay, I’ll just come out and say it.  I’m not a fan of awards, and even more so, those ridiculous awards shows.  The Performing Arts is teeming with them, and these days there are just way too many.  Hollywood, Broadway, the Record biz… enough already.  You can buy awards now for crying out loud.  Studios campaign for them like politicians in an effort to add prestige to their films and TV shows.  They plan their release dates accordingly.  It’s really kind of gross.  One of my favorite random Simpson’s references is from about ten years ago when Homer was watching the Award Show of the Year - Award Show, on TV… the Awardies.  Brilliant.

Dwight Howard... is the Eraser...

But honestly, at least the NBA just hands out its awards with five-minute acknowledgments before games, not with all the pomp and circumstance of the more extravagant ego trips.  The major ones are the league's Most Valuable Player, Defensive Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, and Sixth Man of the Year.  The MVP is by far the most controversial of the lot, because the definition of the MVP is so vague.  Most Valuable Player?  Does that mean best player?  Most indispensible?  No one knows.  And the league wants it that way.  More conjecture is a good thing, and whatever the voters decide goes.  Now this year we’re all pretty sure that Derrick Rose of Chicago will win the MVP, Clipper Blake Griffin will definitely win Rookie of the Year, the Bulls’ Tom Thibedoux will be Coach of the Year, Lamar Odom just won Sixth Man, and a few days back, Dwight Howard shocked absolutely no one by winning his third straight Defensive Player of the Year Award. 

Starting in 1982 five of the first Six DPOY’s were awarded to perimeter-oriented players, but since then - since 1988, only two perimeter players have won the award; Gary Payton in 1996 and Ron Artest in 2004.  It has basically morphed into “the Shot-Blocker of the Year Award” where big men are always heavily favored.  This shift has been embraced and now it is just generally accepted that the little guys get enough attention elsewhere; so they should just let the big men have their respective moments in the sun.  This thinking does make some sense of course, because good defensive teams are always anchored by a dominant low post presence, so the best defenses are all showcased by a ferocious shot-blocker.  But c’mon… in the last 23 years, the “best defender in the league” has been a low-post player 21 times?  No way.  I’m calling Shenanigans. 

Long ago it became clear that, in basketball, stats are difficult.  There are just too many variables and intangible things happening throughout a free flowing team game to ever really quantify individual statistics definitively.  But the two major stats that have come to represent the defensive end of the floor are blocks and steals.  Generally 3 blocks or 3 steals per game for a player is considered very good, but oddly, neither stat is necessarily indicative of playing good defense.  And conversely, a player could play great defense all game long, and not log a single statistic to prove it.  So how could any of the voters know who the best defensive player is?  Watch ALL the games???  Well, naturally it makes the Defensive Player of the Year Award quite difficult.

But still, what’s with the big man domination?  If you’re talking about versatile defenders, those guys don’t really cut the mustard do they?  Which brings us to arguably the most versatile defender (and thereby maybe the best defender) of all-time, Scottie Pippen.  Scottie Pippen was the most dominant defensive presence of his era.  He made the NBA’s All-Defensive First Team eight times, and Second Team twice.  (During that ten-year span, Dikembe Mutombo won DPOY 4 times, Hakeem Olajuwon twice, Alonzo Mourning twice, and David Robinson once.  It was the all centers club.)

But Scottie, could do it all.

Pippen was 6-7 with long arms, and was deadly quick, an amazing leaper, and incredibly competitive.  He could basically defend any player at any position; and shut them down.  He may have done more to disrupt opposing teams' offenses than any other player in NBA history, and yet he never won a Defensive Player of the Year award.  I don’t think he was ever even the runner up.  That's just crazy.  So here is where we need to adjust our thinking on this award.  People, please consider all of the great defenders in the league, not just the lumbering big men in the paint.  Remember the (slightly) shorter guys too!

Now, that’s not to say that Dwight Howard isn’t deserving of the award this season because I think he is.  But the fact that Scottie Pippen may have been the best defender ever and was never really in contention for this award once (much less multiple times) is pure folly.  We can’t let that happen again. 

Hmmm… I guess I do care about awards after all.

Thanks for Reading. 

Underdogs OUT!