Is the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) voting system racist?
The NBA is home to a number of conspiracy theories every season. With so many of the best players in the world going up against each other with thousands of people supporting them, a clash in opinion is guaranteed. However, sometimes a clash in opinion is followed by the spread of a conspiracy theory – which is exactly what happened after Kendrick Perkins’ comments.
With the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic on his way to a third consecutive Most Valuable Player award, former NBA champion and current analyst Perkins questioned the voting system and called it out for having a racial bias – which did not go down well amongst many people.
Perkins said that only three players since 1990 have won an MVP despite being outside the top 10 in points per game: Jokic in his first MVP campaign in 2020-21, Dirk Nowitzki (2006-07) and Steve Nash (2004-05, 2005-06). “What do those guys have in common? I’ll let it sit there and marinate. You think about it,” he said on “First Take”, testing co-host Stephen A. Smith.
The insinuation has done the rounds on social media ever since, and did not go down too well amongst many.
What did the NBA community have to say about the MVP racist allegation?
While the NBA community ripped into Perkins, JJ Redick and Charles Barkley turned out to be two of his hardest critics.
Speaking about Perkins’ comments, Barkley said: “Asinine, silly and stupid. Pick one of the words, whatever one you want. One of the things that’s silly about ESPN at times, they do this silly debate every year about the MVP, going back to even when I played.”
JJ Redick appeared on First Take himself and said: “It is an honor to be on this desk every day. It really is. But what we just witnessed is the problem with this show. Where we create narratives that do not exist in reality. The implication that you are implying – that the white voters that vote on NBA (awards) are racist, that they favor white people. You just said that.”
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