The NBA Awards Since The Regular Season Really Does Mean Something

There should be an award for a team that misses the playoffs in one conference when they would have been the fifth seed in the other conference.  This award has been a long time in the coming.  Since 2001 in the NBA's Western Conference, the teams with the six best records in the modern playoff era have not made the playoffs.  This award might be too late or it simply might have been the ninth best award since 2001, thus missing the award cavalcade for eight years.

Not this year because with 46 wins, the Phoenix Suns have won The NBA Regular Season Really Does Mean Something Award.  The winner of this award gets an offseason of nagging questions, player movement with possible coach and general manager replacements.

Congrats to the Suns, it took a lot of work (and some unfortunate geography) to make this award feasible.

So now that the regular season does actually mean something in the NBA, let's see who else has risen above, or fallen below, the crowd.

The Best Team Award has to go to the Cleveland Cavs.  Battling through injuries to three of their starters this season, they still posted the best record in the NBA's regular season, which, as we have already discussed, does mean something.  Laker fans might say that they did beat the best team twice, including one of the Cavs two home losses this season, and that they had their own injuries to deal with when Kobe rolled up on Andrew Bynum's knee.

Well Laker fans, your team might end up being the best team of the NBA Playoffs and when you win that award their is a real nice trophy involved and a title of NBA Champion to go with it.  I know this might hurt because the NBA regular season really does mean something or it might not since we are onto the next phase of the NBA season.

LeBron James might be the easy pick for NBA's MVP this year but I don't even know what valuable means anymore according to the voters of that strange award.  Valuable to those voters means the best player on the best team but that is not what it means to me.  I want to give the best player the award for being the best player so I would like to award The Best Player in the NBA's Regular Season Award next.  With the supporting cast that Dwayne Wade has, he was the Best Player in the NBA this regular season.

The Best Coach in the NBA is really easy for me since he has been the best coach in the league for years now.  Phil Jackson is the standard in NBA coaching this era.  He was the leader of three separate trilogies and that equals nine titles.  He has been through a rebuilding process in Los Angeles and now they are again the best team in the West.  No one is better at managing egos than Phil Jackson and that is where he has always separated himself from the other coaches in this league.

Now that we have declared the NBA's regular season does mean something, my next question is how did we get here.  We had to wade through the NBA's off-season so let's take a closer look at that.

The Best Offseason move was the Cavs picking up Mo Williams.  The Cavs have been looking for a point guard to complement LeBron since he was brought into the league.  There was the failed Ricky Davis and Larry Hughes deals.  Those might have failed since they were not true point guards.  The Cavs get a true point guard in Mo Williams and they become the Best Team in the NBA.

And now for some of the Dookie Awards, named after the revered university that has yet to have a great NBA player, Grant Hill was derailed by injuries but if we gave awards on what could have been then this whole exercise I am doing of making up awards would just be silly. 

The Dookie for worst offseason coaching hire was Terry Porter in Phoenix.  This was not Porter's fault, he came in and was the guy they hired.  He was who they thought he was to coin a phrase.  The roster was not a defensive minded roster and this was never a fit.    

The Dookie for worst offseason player transaction was Elton Brand.  Not only did the former Duke player handle his move from the Clippers to the 76ers in a very bad way, he was hurt most of the season and the team played better without him.  I have this feeling that if the 76ers do move Brand this off-season that another Dookie might be in his future.

And finally there is the Stephon Marbury Award.  This award goes to the player who is such a cancer to his team that he has to buy his own ticket to see his team play while still collecting a multi-million dollar paycheck from the team that made him buy his own ticket.  This player can also be suspended for a game during the season when he was already inactive and had to buy his own ticket plus finally being bought out of his contract so he can go to a rival team and make the playoffs, a triple double of ineptitude and selfishness if you will.

So the winner of the first annual Stephon Marbury Award goes to none other than Stephon Marbury.  Due to scheduling conflicts, Stephon will not be able to accept this award in person so we will make him pay to have it shipped to Boston.  We will also be sending him a bill for the trophy itself and the opportunity to buy a season ticket package to the Florida International University basketball home games in 2009-2010.