Suns Broadcaster Eddie Johnson Presents Solution to NBA Voting Problems

A discussion has once again been sparked about who, exactly, should be voting on end-of-year NBA awards after Draymond Green questioned why Bill Simmons should have a say in a professional athlete’s earning potential yesterday. It is not a discussion without merit. Tying max contracts to awards voted on by the media has fundamental issues, but it’s hard to find a solution without different but similarly problematic fundamental issues.

Former Phoenix Suns guard-turned-broadcaster Eddie Johnson decided to enter the ring with his own creative answer to the problem at hand. Johnson tweeted out a list of criteria he believed to be fair that any voter must meet if they are to have a say in MVP and All-NBA teams. It’s… well, it’s quite something.

It would be tremendous if the NBA instituted a rule that viewing must not be done from a “man cave” in their official league ledger. The best rule is easily that one did not take math above an algebra level, which nearly everybody in the country had to do in order to graduate high school. It is unclear why Johnson believes a complete lack of mathematical understanding would fix the “hoard of analytical robots” problem that is apparently pervasive in voting.

But as Johnson points out, the issue at hand is the possibility of people voting irrationally. I am unsure how hitting six of 10 free throws in front of 18,000 booing fans would solve that. We see plenty of former players with utterly irrational opinions on a daily basis. It is, in fact, impossible to separate a person from their bias. The NBA’s job is to figure out a way to eliminate that as a problem to the best of their ability. It will never fully go away. People are irrational and biased. Even if they didn’t take precalculus.