NBA Players To Hold First Ever Basketball Players Awards
By Ray Boyd
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The National Basketball Players Association will unveil the first ever Basketball Players Awards this July. The awards show will be held in Las Vegas and will honor the best players in the game today.
The awards are being decided by the current crop of active NBA players and voting for the awards has been underway for weeks.
These awards serve as an opportunity for NBA players to honor their own peers and not rely on the views of media members like the awards handed out by the league each year. Some of the honors mirror the awards handed out by the league, but some are unique to the Basketball Players Awards.
The Basketball Players Awards will include Most Valuable Player, Best Rookie and Best Defender. All three of those awards have clear counterparts among the honors handed out by the league.
This new set of awards will also include Man of the Year, Global Impact Player, Hardest to Guard, Clutch Performer, Coach You Would Want to Play For, Best Home Court Advantage and Player You Secretly Wish Was On Your Team.
It will be interesting to see if the common honors will have different recipients when you have media members vote as compared to the players themselves. Will Kawhi Leonard be named Best Defender after being named Defensive Player of the Year?
"Experts," see Steph Curry, LeBron James, James Harden and Russell Westbrook as the clear MVP candidates, but will the players award it to a dark horse not on that list like a Chris Paul or Anthony Davis?
How will Best Rookie go? On the surface it seems like Andrew Wiggins is the front-runner for the league's award, but there have been pockets of support for rookies like Nerlens Noel, who had a historically relevant defensive season, and Nikola Mirotic, who became a serious contributor on a Bulls team that some see as a championship contender.
The NBA players have recognized that no so-called "expert," can be more of an "expert," than they are. It is nice to be honored by a group of guys that sit behind a computer everyday and may not have touched a basketball at all in the last decade. However, it says a lot to be held in high regard by your colleagues.
