Then, it was young scoring hotshot Kevin Durant vs. And those are reforms that certainly make sense.īut the result of the transparency has been even more public shaming than before - to the point where voters just don’t see it as worth it to buck the trend, even if they disagree with it.Ĭompare the Rookie of the Year race in 2008 to the one in 2023. Every vote would be published publicly at the end, after every award was announced. Team broadcasters were removed from the equation. In 2017, the league changed the process, limiting the number of voters to an even 100. What I think has changed is the amount of groupthink that occurs when voting. Locally, Jazz broadcaster Ron Boone received the same for voting Deron Williams over Chris Paul for Rookie of the Year. Gary Washburn was heavily criticized for voting Carmelo Anthony for MVP over LeBron James. Fred Hickman got death threats when he voted for Allen Iverson over Shaquille O’Neale for MVP. To be sure, derision over “bad votes” has happened throughout history. It tends to take over your day, or multiple days. I certainly have been critical of others, players and media, though not with the same vitriol.īut it’s still more impactful than you’d hope, to have hundreds to thousands of people seeking to find any way they can hurt you most effectively. Without that ability for the masses to be able to have their say in a basketball conversation, I wouldn’t have a career - I worked my way up in the basketball blogging scene before being hired by KSL, and then the Tribune. I’m a veteran of the internet and the way in which disagreements can spiral out of control. I truthfully didn’t expect Paolo Banchero fans to be in the same stratosphere - but they were. The only time I’ve faced something comparable was when the far-right conspiracy theorist InfoWars people came after me after an article I wrote three years ago. I received emails and phone calls, had strange and critical voicemails. Instead, they looked up my personal Instagram and Facebook pages, posting comments on my old photos.
Interestingly, many commenters weren’t happy to leave feedback on Twitter. Those called me slurs, notably of the anti-gay variety.
Those messages were generally more positive than the 200 or so private direct messages I received.
Some argued I was racist because I had selected the white player. Many said I should have my vote revoked, or called me a clown, or a nerd, or an idiot, etc. You would have thought I had killed the Pope.Ībout 3,000 people sent a public message on Twitter - most were about how I was a homer, or how they felt advanced analytics were ruining the game of basketball.
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