When the NBA's end-of-season awards and corresponding voting totals were announced, I became obsessed with a strange and consistent pattern of results: Despite finishing 9th in the Western Conference and playing as a basically average team, Sacramento Kings players were highly overrated in the awards voting. Or rather, highly overrated in the awards. Ballotpeculiar.
So imagine my shock when the results for Defensive Player of the Year came out and someone had the nerve to pick Domantas Sabonis third. The next day, Nikola Jokic won his third MVP award and Sabonis also got one fourth-place vote. When the All-Defensive Teams were announced, I was prepared. And Sabonis got one vote, as did De'Aaron Fox. Even before this mysterious voter showed his cards, I predicted Sabonis would get some All-NBA votes and maybe even make the third team, and he did. But no one expected him to make the first team, but the mysterious voter did. When the league announced the results for Executive of the Year, Monte McNair had gotten the first-place vote, which he got for, er, signing Sasha Bezenkov.
I like that the awards voting isn't completely dominated by big domestic names. Seven people from The Ringer's staff and 17 from ESPN vote, including Kevin O'Connor, but they at least form a group of people who really know basketball, except for Michael Wilbon, who voted Anthony Edwards second for MVP. The NBA also gives votes to reporters from international media, like the NBA in France. L'Equipe,Italian Gazzetta dello SportPhilippines signaland local reporters. I thought I knew who voted for the Kings. Sacramento Bee's Jason Anderson is one of the 99 people eligible to vote. Anderson isn't one of the most well-sourced Kings reporters, but he works for the city's largest newspaper (a dying, gasping ghost), so naturally, I figured, the home run effect would kick in. After all, the only person who picked Giannis Antetokounmpo as MVP works for a Greek newspaper.
But it wasn't. I was wrong. The mysterious Kings voter MalkaJuan Ignacio Garcia Ochoa of the NBA has written almost exclusively about Real Madrid. Garcia also cast some unusual votes. He was the only voter to select Anthony Edwards as Clutch Player of the Year and Bobby Portis as an All-Defensive Second Team player. Malka Garcia covers the NBA, but he doesn't (Garcia did not respond to a request for comment). The only connection I can think of is that Sabonis grew up in Spain and his father played for the Real Madrid basketball team in the '90s. On the one hand, this is super funny, and none of the awards were close enough to be meaningfully derailed by one fraudulent voter who supposedly only watches the Kings. On the other hand, there are real financial stakes here, tens of millions of dollars at stake.
Ultimately, I'd prefer the NBA continue to give ballots to those who cover the league in media outside the U.S. The league's players, coaches, and fan base are not uniformly American, and I'd rather have some unconventional ballots than have everyone who's ever appeared on ESPN's NBA programming decide the vote. I wish the league would make them take their voting responsibilities more seriously, or maybe Garcia would really step up to the plate and pick Colby Jones for Rookie of the Year.
