All-Star Game?
The NBA All-Star Game starters have been announced. Surprisingly, some players that maybe contenders for the MVP award didn’t make it in the roster. Although some players legitimately deserve to start, some really don’t.
The votes for the All-Star game are collected from all over the world and this means two things. The good part is that the public gets to vote for the players they want to see in the All-Star game. The bad part of the deal is that the public also votes for their favorite players which may not always be the best players.
The starters for the west are Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, and Yao Ming. But, what about the league leader in assists, Steve Nash? He averages 11.1 assists per game and his team went from being the worst in the league last year to one of the top contenders this year. Or Ray Allen? The SuperSonic who averages 24 points per game and has led his team to 32 victories (4th best among NBA teams). Or Dirk Nowitzki? Who despite loosing Steve Nash during the preseason, has managed to keep his Dallas Mavericks competitive and led them to 31 wins.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone starting is good, but the truth is that besides Tim Duncan everyone else’s team is struggling earn a playoff birth. For example, Kevin Garnett, the 2003-2004 Most Valuable Player, wouldn’t make it to the post season if the playoffs started today. The All Star game used to be great but it has degenerated into a 5 on 5 dunk contest and that is why the public today votes for flashy and athletic players instead of the fundamentally sound and more technique oriented players.
Moreover, Yao Ming, who is not the league’s best player, got the most votes in NBA history (2’558’278 votes). This is all due to the fact that people in
The system of selecting the players for the All-Star game seems fun for the public but is it really fair for the players?
posted by Anonymous at
6:12 PM
1 Comments:
This is a good post, with lots of interesting discussion points, for example what "the best" means (this is also related to the movie posts), what statistics might identify true "all stars" halfway through the season, and also the difference between "most valuable player" and "best player" (which often isn't the same person).
I'm going to focus on thing in this post and it is, "The system of selecting the players for the All-Star game seems fun for the public but is it really fair for the players?".
Fair is a loaded word. While we all have our own idea about what is fair, it is difficult, if not impossible, to get a group of people to agree on its definition in a particular context. For example, is a 10% tax cut fair? You can make the case for and against. For: Everyone gets the same percent break. Against: Rich people get more money back than poor people (i.e. a person that pay $10,000 in taxes now pays $1000 less but a person who pays only $1,000 in taxes now pays $100 less).
When I say fair, I generally think of "playing within the rules", so that choosing All-Stars is fair as long as the criteria are laid out clearly and not changed during the process, and are generally followed.
And, yes letting fans choosing all-star teams does bias the poll in favor of popular players (the Yao Ming story reminds me of 1957 when baseball fans in Cincinnati stuffed the ballot box and elected their entire team to start the all star game. But look at it this way: If the most popular players didn't start, then the game would be less attractive, fewer people might watch the game, hurting the revenues the NBA (and the players) receive from the game. So it seems that all involved have an incentive to pick popular, if not the best, players.
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John Topoleski, at 12:13 PM
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