When NBA Awards Do More Harm Than Good

For the actual skilled labor of the NBA, the playoffs are their own reward. Yet the league persists in giving out awards for the regular season, primarily so players can be embarrassed (Dirk Nowitzki's 2007 MVP) or so fans have something to argue about or discredit in between second-round contests. Because, let's face it, aside from coaching jobs no one really wants, and free agency scenarios now as well-worn as a toilet brush, the news cycle gets mighty barren around this time.

Certainly, the league isn't interested in handing out trophies that its best and brightest can treasure for years to come and pass down to their kids, who may or may not look at them as a burden. Take, for instance, the extremely sex-tastic All-Defensive teams, announced yesterday.

Defense wins championships, and anyone who watches ball has had that slogan whipped into them. Shades of 1984, Family Matters, and Dust Bowl parenting. But really, it's a hard sell. Casual fans like baskets. They like to talk about toughness, and yet toughness varies inversely with watch-ability. Skilled defense is awesome to behold, and yet chanting "DE-FENSE" only happens so often for the reason.

Defense needs to do a better job of selling itself as something other than a guilt trip or vitamin deficiency that might kill us all. That's why it's so ludicrous that Josh Smith -- runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year -- only managed to make the second team.



Share Now, we behind the veil can talk for days about who votes which way, and why, and who really fills out the ballots, and how corrupt it all is. But I stand with the people. The people who care only slightly more about Defensive awards than they do Grant Hill's third Ethical Performer of the Hardwood Award -- which, if you ask me, should be subject to the same self-limiting properties as "Shaq for MVP" once was. Ain't nobody nicer. Nobody.

About Smith, though. He was left off the All-Star team as a reserve, which stunk to high heaven. But the All-Star selections are a numbers game, and weird things happen. Case in point, Deron Williams making his first team this year. What's a snub when the criteria don't exist, and the process has about as much logic to it as a chimera's hind tail?

What's a snub when the criteria don't exist, and the process has about as much logic to it as a chimera's hind tail? Defensive Player of the Year, though, is the big enchilada. It was always fated to go to Dwight Howard -- just as LeBron James had the MVP coming his way, except somehow it was okay if Smith or Gerald Wallace got some first-place votes. And yet Smith coming on in second spoke volumes. Whoever voted on the thing, it said to the public "dude is now among the premier defenders in the league." For a public only so interested in these things, it was a nice hook. The boy has become a man. The Hawks are in the building.

And then yesterday, all that went crumbling. Simply put, no amount of "who votes on what and why" can explain away Smith on the second team.

For the All-Star team, speculation, squeeze-outs, and self-interest are part of the game. But it's okay, since justice will never be served. In these two cases of defensive awards, we have two ballots seeking to determine who defends better than others. The average fan could care less what ballot actually goes where, and why irregularities may be proof of corruption. The All-Star Game is inherently messed-up, a combination of irrational fan voting and coaches trying to pick up the pieces as best they can. Perfection is out of the question.

All-Stars, though, don't need attention. All-Star Weekend is an event. The defensive awards? They need to be making a push for relevance. The way not to do that? Send conflicting signals whose only recourse is the the kind of explanatory inside basketball (who is the voter, why do they err) that casual fans have zero interest in.

It would be like if the MVP didn't make the first-time All-NBA. Both would be cheapened, and they would cease to be any kind of compelling story. And that's the MVP, for heck's sake. So I come here not to plead for Josh Smith, or observe that he's now been twice screwed by process. Just donning the cap of the commoner and say, avidly, "WTF?" Defense matters. Our defensive stars matter. But mixed messages that render these honors meaningless -- and mostly just lead us into tired battles over whether Kobe Bryant still defends or not -- defeat the purpose of honoring defense in the first place.

Speaking of awards, and the Hawks' opponents tonight, I wanted to weigh in, well after the fact, on the MVP voting. Let's get this out of the way: I have no problem with someone voting for Dwight Howard out of sincerity, but voting for him just because 1) you don't feel like LeBron is good enough to be unanimous or 2) you want to make sure that Howard's name is acknowledged, beyond being the runner-up. From there, it's a slippery slope toward a parliamentary system, or -- gasp -- a team of great players, not one single King of Kings.

But there's a reason why you hear Howard, and not Kevin Durant, put out there as the heretical pick. Remember when James, good as he was, seemed to have not fully tapped into what he was capable of? Howard still feels that way, chiefly on offense. Durant, not so much so. Howard will get his MVP, or at least make the race close. First, though, more voters need to feel like he's fully-formed and truly come into his own. Dwight himself said as much during an interview clip broadcast on Tuesday.

One last cranky awards point: Coach of the Year is the worst. There are so many different kinds of coaching accomplishment. Lionel Hollins, or Scott Skiles, deserves something for dredging up a winning team.

Scott Brooks's honor came for the Thunder's leap into excellence. Alvin Gentry not only made a surprising power out of the reconstituted Suns, but proved them more than a novelty act. And wouldn't it be nice if there were some sort of Life Achievement Award, given to a coach past or present, for sustained greatness? That way, Phil Jackson or Jerry Sloan could be honored regularly like they should. Though repeatedly winning "lifetime achievement" is a bit off.

Whatever. Fill out your census so this doesn't happen again.