My NBA Awards ballot: picking every NBA award for the 2023-24 season
By Ben Handler
Sadly, I do not have an official ballot to vote on NBA Awards…yet. I’m hopeful that will come with time, but I do think I am worthy to weigh in and give fair judgment to each one, so that is exactly what I will do here.
These are NOT my predictions on who I think will end up winning these awards, but this is what I think SHOULD happen and how I would vote if I did get sent that elusive ballot from the NBA. Maybe next year… without further ado.
Clutch Player of the Year
This is just a dumb award in my opinion. The thought behind it was good and well-intentioned, but it ends up based on some advanced stats and what they tell us about crunch time performance. During the regular season, I find that this is based on small sample sizes and some luck,
Last year, the award went to De’Aaron Fox, who was deserving, but also nobody's choice to take the last shot with the game on the line. This also comes down to opportunity, as some of the most heralded clutch time killers just haven’t had many chances to win tight games down the stretch.
We also have a natural human tendency to remember and reward specific moments, like awesome buzzer beaters, instead of a complete body of work for how a player performs in the last five minutes of games throughout a season. So I would vote for this award based on the guys I’m most confident in to close out games for their teams down the stretch based solely on what I saw this season.