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NBA Powerless Rankings: 5 lessons we didn’t learn in the regular season

By Matt Rutkowski

BOSTON, MA - JANUARY 18: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been converted to black and white) Jayson Tatum
BOSTON, MA - JANUARY 18: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been converted to black and white) Jayson Tatum /
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LAS VEGAS, NV – FEBRUARY 22: Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair’s bass drum head is displayed in a memorabilia case after it was unveiled ahead of the band’s five-night ‘Feed the Machine’ residency at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel
LAS VEGAS, NV – FEBRUARY 22: Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair’s bass drum head is displayed in a memorabilia case after it was unveiled ahead of the band’s five-night ‘Feed the Machine’ residency at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel /

3. It’s okay to like what you like

The internet is not a good place for arguing. There are many reasons for this, but the one I find most off-putting is people not being true to themselves as to why they’re making the points they make.

The best thing, in my opinion, that ESPN.com ever did was the little SportsNation polls on their home site. It was fun to throw my voice into the void like thousands of others, but the cool part was that after you voted the poll would show you the results broken down by state.

It shouldn’t be surprising, but results were often dependant on locale. Say it was 2009 and the poll was “Who is the best player in the NBA?” LeBron and Kobe would have the highest number of votes. LeBron would win Ohio by maybe a 80-20 percent margin. Kobe would take California by like a 70-30 percent margin since California has multiple teams. States across the US would be split, with the eastern states leaning more LeBron and the western states leaning more Kobe.

Then Chris Paul would end up taking Lousiana with maybe 55 percent of the vote.

Were you to ask the people who voted for Paul why they did, they would give stats like assists, or maybe the quality of his surrounding cast, or maybe his playoff performance in 2008 where he averaged the most assists of any playoff player while scoring 24 points per game after leading the team to the second best record in the Western Conference.

What they wouldn’t say is “because Chris Paul is the best player on my favorite team.” What’s more likely, coincidentally people from Louisiana all agree on the arguments for Paul being the best player in the league based on the merits of those arguments alone, or that those arguments were a side effect of a rooting interest?

The latter isn’t worse. The latter, if embraced, is probably better. Our choices are never absent emotion. The emotions give the entire enterprise of watching dudes really good at bouncing and throwing a ball around matter.

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