Views from OKC: Why Westbrook wasn’t unanimous
By Tony Heim
Views from OKC is a diary from an OKC Thunder fan. Today we answer – or try to answer – the question we all asked ourselves yesterday.
Before I begin this rant, let me say one thing. Stephen Curry is not in the wrong. Steph is an admittedly amazing basketball player that also happens to play for a truly incredible team. In a normal season his 26-7-5 and 67 wins would be enough to net him a First Team spot, but this wasn’t a normal NBA season.
So now I ask the question: Who had the audacity to put Steph Curry over Russell Westbrook on their All-NBA ballot? I don’t want to be like this. I really don’t. But when you see that LeBron James was also left off the First Team ballot in favor of one of the Golden State forwards the pieces start to come together.
We have a homer.
That shouldn’t be a shock to you. The biggest sports homer of them all, Boston’s finest Bill Simmons, has a vote every year. But Bill doesn’t let his homerism get in the way of his duty to help create NBA history.
Logic leads us to look at Anthony Slater first. Slater is the lone Warriors beat writer on the list of 100 voters, but Slater also was a valued Oklahoman beat writer that never showed big-time bias in his tenure. The list also rules out Tim Kawakami and Chris Hayes, two notorious reporters/columnists that Thunder fans quickly hypothesized could be the culprits.
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So now we have to sit and wait – the official ballots won’t be released until the night of the NBA Awards show. There’s no sense of speculating names. There’s no sense in trying to guess who is trying to kiss Golden State’s ass (and that’s exactly what this is). At the end of the day we’ll find out the culprit, and we’ll be able to shame them on social media soon enough.
Until then sleep easy knowing Russell Westbrook is on the First Team All-NBA. There aren’t enough Warriors lovers/Russ haters to deny his greatness. But when the ballots come out, and there’s the inevitable Steph Curry/Kevin Durant partnership on one First Team, the NBA will be put on notice.
Voting for these NBA Awards is a privilege, something that this group of mostly non-athletes never dreamed they’d be able to do. I hope I get the honor one day. The problem is some voters don’t see it as an honor anymore – they see it as a means to set their own agenda.
That’s what the NBA has to change if they continue to allow the media to vote.