Comments on: Greg Monroe ties for fourth in Most Improved Player Award voting

By: Corey

Corey — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:52:11 +0000

NBA media award voting is heavily influenced by narrative and discussion amongst the media before the votes. People write columns about who they think is deserving of what awards, and read each others’ columns. Then a consensus develops about who should win, and that person wins most of the votes. The results after all the columns are published and read are very different from what they’d be if all the writers had to vote without ever reading each others’ columns. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but it’s why there tends to be a consensus in the votes. You primarily see this in the Coach of the Year and MVP voting, but it affects the others. It’s just most obvious with CoY and MVP. In MVP, you can especially see it in a year like when Derek Rose won. He didn’t deserve to win, but you could watch the consensus develop in the articles that were written that year. The voters didn’t want to give it to the best player (Lebron), so they had to figure out the story and player that they’d all vote for, rather than scatter the votes and have lebron win anyway.

By: Max

Max — Sat, 05 May 2012 18:07:14 +0000

But Bynum didn’t really improve, he merely stayed healthy and filled in a bit more due to the Lakers lack of depth.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Sat, 05 May 2012 10:49:39 +0000

I would have definitely gone with Bynum. But Pekovic and Ibaka deserved consideration. So do Lowry and Dragic, but they were gonna cancel each other out.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Sat, 05 May 2012 10:47:46 +0000

“it will be clear that these post-season awards are all about who the NBA wants to market the most”

You really think Ryan Anderson is who the NBA is trying to market?

Wow, I can’t believe how rampant this the-media-is-out-to-screw-us mentality is. Look, winning awards is usually based on a combination of stats and the eye test. If you fall short on either one, even if everyone else does for at least one too, you are still just one in a crowd. You could win, but your case is not super compelling so the odds are simply against you.

And before complaining about Monroe’s vote total, look at a guy like Paul George (who I think improved more than Monroe, but at the very least was close to Monroe in improvement). George got a measly 13 points to Monroe’s 96.

Finally, Chauncey for MVP in ’06?!?!? Really? Nash’s win was certainly questionable, but Billups was not a serious contender for the award. Heck, I remember following MVP projection columns that basically hit the nail on the head when they put Billups typically around 10th with the explanation that somebody had to represent Detroit’s brilliance. Pretty much by coin toss (and because he won Finals MVP), they might choose Billups. But when you are arguably the 5th best player on your team, you are not an MVP candidate. Not too take anything away from Billups but 1-5 on that team were really tightly bunched.

By: Max

Max — Sat, 05 May 2012 06:49:43 +0000

Ryan Anderson lived off Dwight Howard being double teamed offensively and obviously hid behind him defensively. He has done quite poorly without Howard too so I’m shocked that he won the award. I haven’t even thought of who actually deserves the award but I think I would have gone with Jeff Teague or Ilyasova since I wouldn’t give any consideration at all to second year players like Monroe.

By: gmehl

gmehl — Sat, 05 May 2012 06:14:57 +0000

Mark i agree with your stat analysis slightly but you have to remember this is not NBA2k12 were talking about, its real life basketball and other factors come into play like your teams record and how you much better you made your team and team mates. Still it should of been tighter than the end results showed.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:58:13 +0000

It really makes no sense why Anderson would win that convincingly, considering Monroe actually had a higher increase in production and less increase in minutes.

Anderson – In 10 more mpg vs last season:

Pts: +5.5
Rebs: +2.2
Asts: +0.1

Monroe – In 4 more mpg vs last season

Pts: +6.0
Rebs: +2.2
Asts: +1.1

Monroe not only out-improved him, he did it in less than half the increase in minutes. Makes no sense. Whenever a Piston loses an award, like Chauncey losing MVP to Nash in ’06, its always ‘they didn’t have the stats to back them up’. Now a Piston has the stats in his favor and still doesn’t win.

And Knight will probably be left off the 1st rookie team, despite being the 2nd leading scorer, 4th in total pts, rebs, and asts, 5th in asts, and 5th in 3 pt shooting. If he does get left off the 1st team, it will be clear that these post-season awards are all about who the NBA wants to market the most.

By: Patrick Hayes

Patrick Hayes — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:00:38 +0000

Yeah, I have no idea, other than it probably shows the discrepancy in voting media members who look at advanced stats and those who don't. I think anyone who remotely follows advanced stats knew Anderson showed major improvement last year and just kind of built on it a little in a slightly larger role this year. I don't really know how to explain how it was so lopsided in favor of him.

There were probably five guys I considered giving my first place vote to in the TrueHoop balloting and Anderson wasn't one of them.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Sat, 05 May 2012 03:48:11 +0000

I’m amazed by how soundly Anderson won. He really dominated the competition. Considering that I really had no idea who would win, it is shocking that this wasn’t very close.