Tuesday, April 13

Weird title

Click on this link about OSU superstar Evan Turner winning the John Wooden Award as college basketball's best player for the '09-10 season.

Notice the headline above the text: Wall finishes second in voting. Does that strike anyone else as an odd way to frame the story? I would have gone with something like, oh I don't know, Turner wins Wooden Award. I guess that's why I'm not a professional journalist.

Interesting that Turner has now won seven PoY trophies for his work: Wooden, Naismith, Robertson, Fox Sports, NABC, TSN, and AP Player of the Year awards. Bizarrely, he didn't win them all. In fact, he wasn't even a unanimous all-Big 10 selection, though there may be rules against Thad Matta voting for Turner. Can anyone clarify this? Somehow, Sherron Collins won a superfluous-sounding piece of hardware called the Lute Olson Award, while Kentucky's Wall won the Adolph Rupp trophy and Yahoo! Sports' award. Doesn't seem fishy at all that a UK Wildcat would win an award devoted to "honoring the legacy of University of Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp," now does it? Please. No idea what Yahoo!'s excuse is.

This got me thinking a bit about the NBA MVP voting, which will be announced before long. Let's be unequivocal: LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers is the NBA MVP for the 2009-2010 season. That is a fact. There is no debate. It is not even close. If you disagree with me on this statement, then you are wrong. Bill Simmons cleverly tweeted recently that it's perhaps not enough just to give LeBron the award - they should give him two, or maybe a bigger one than usual.

But watch: some dummy will vote for someone else. They always do. There's always some sportswriter with some crazy non-logic who hides behind his vote's anonymity or else writes a comically misguided piece about why he voted for Inferior Player X. I hope the American sportswriting community gets it right and all vote for the award's rightful winner. You know, the same cat who's on his way to Finals MVP. There, I said it. Go Cavs.

1 comment:

Andy said...

And...this guy's not voting for LeBron.