NBA Most Valuable Player: A Joke of an Award

It's that time of the year again—let the campaigning begin.

Oh, I'm not talking about John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. I'm talking about the NBA's Most Valuable Player Award.

You can't watch a game anymore without hearing chants of "MVP! MVP!" every time an All-Star steps to the free-throw line.

And for what?

So you can have bragging rights until NFL training camps open and everyone has already forgotten who won?

For the most part, the NBA's MVP Award has been a joke since 1995. That was the year when David Robinson stole the award from Hakeem Olajuwon and The Dream took it personally—he made it a point of humiliating Robinson in the playoffs that year, en route to his second-consecutive championship.

Since then, the only legitimate MVP winners were Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan, Steve Nash and Shaquille O'Neal.

Karl Malone?

A joke.

Allen Iverson?

A bigger joke.

Dirk Nowitzki?

The biggest joke.

When did this arbitrary award, voted on by writers, become so gosh darn important? Have you seen what most of these writers look like?

At what moment did balding, 5'6", 290 lb. men become the authority on all things basketball?

Take a look at ESPN's Marc Stein, the Chicago Tribune's Sam Smith, or Mark Heisler of the Los Angeles Times and tell me if you think any of them would make more than two out of ten free throws.

For all intents and purposes, the NBA's MVP should now be described as "the award given to the player that will probably never win a championship but should have at least one thing to put on his mantle."

It all started with Karl Malone.

Undoubtedly, he was one of, if not, the greatest power forward the game has ever seen. But Malone won the award because of sympathetic voters who felt bad that the only thing preventing him from having four rings on his fingers were Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan. 

Perhaps you could even go back to Charles Barkley's MVP in 1993. But you could make a much stronger case for Barkley than you could for Iverson, Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett, or even back-to-back winner, Steve Nash.

Since 1980, only eight franchises have won NBA titles. That's an astonishing number, considering there are 30 franchises total.

Compare that to football, where fourteen different teams have won, or baseball, which has had eighteen different champions since 1980.

The NBA MVP was voted on by the players up until the 1980-81 season. It's tough for anyone to complain about an award voted on by peers. No explanation was given for the change. Perhaps it was because the NBA wanted to prevent the award from turning into a popularity contest.

But it has become just that. 

More recently, the award has become more about whose "turn it is" and which team's marketing machine can stage the best campaign.

It's as if the MVP has become to the Larry O'Brien Trophy what the Golden Globes are to the Academy Awards—not nearly as legitimate but the next-best thing, only because someone told us it was.

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