NBA Awards Voting Process

With the NBA season finishing up a few weeks ago, awards were distributed to the best players over the past season. There are individual based awards such as MVP and Defensive/Offensive Player of the Year, as well as team based awards such as First and Second Team Offense/Defense. Both individual and team based accolades are awarded based on Borda Count voting systems. Individual awards are voted on by over 130 members of the sports media, who rank their top players, assigning more points to higher rankings. The player with the highest cumulative point total wins. All-NBA teams are decided based on a similar Borda Count voting system, voted on by the 30 league coaches instead of the media.

 

Although the different award systems have independent voting bases and objectives, there has been uproar from players and the media who believe the voting systems to be overly complicated and sometimes unfair. For example, in 2013, Marc Gasol won league wide Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY), but then failed to make First Team Defense. As a result, some reporters have advocated for combining the voter bases and moving to a majority rule system, citing its simplicity and ability to prevent supposedly contradictory results. The economic analysis seems to indicate that the current system better represents league wide voting practices. While both awards recognize a player’s basketball strengths, there are clearly two sets of distinctly different preferences being expressed. The members of the media are voting for players that individually demonstrate their greatness, while coaches vote for players based on how well they mesh into a team environment. Secondly, combining the voter bases and moving to a majority rule system of voting would likely reduce the chance of choosing the Condorcet winner, the winner that defeats all others in pairwise elections. Public Choice analysis has shown the Borda Count method to lead to the Condorcet efficient outcome more often than Majority rule voting, as the number of candidates increases. Additionally, by pooling all voters into one voter base, the influence of any one particular member on the outcome is reduced. This could encourage rational ignorance, as voters are less likely to educate themselves when their chance of casting a decisive vote decreases. While to some, NBA voting practices might seem irrational, the current system best reflects the preferences for each type of award and likely leads to the Condorcet efficient outcome.