Every year around this time there are talks about “biggest snubs” and “fan favs” surrounding the All Star voting. It is strange that nobody talks about the ease with which the fan vote can be rigged. So was it? Well it sure is not consistent with every other signal we have about player popularity!
2023, Lillard is with the Blazers, here is what he got. 774,826 votes. Just to remind everyone this is the ‘popular vote’, ie what you can do from your computer or phone or tablet.
So the very next year he moves to the Bucks, the “small market” and more than triples his fan votes! From 0.7 to 2.1 million. Amazing. Even though he didn’t even play very well that first year. Even though the media vote had him 5th again. Was there any kind of identity check when you voted? Yeah, not really, just user name and password. Not even IP was checked for having been used before.
And then this year he fell to 1,570,294 votes. At the same team, same fanbase, even though he is clearly playing better ball this season. And this year you could cheat the system even easier, just a google account and you automatically have an nba.com ID and you can vote every 8 hours. That simple. Why every 8 hours? It sure as hell gives determined cheats (or bots) an advantage over ‘normal’ fans. Most of us probably only remember to vote every day or every other day…
So what happened? The only rational explanation is that some (probably Greek) fans of Giannis with access to a University server maybe and knowledge in programming got a bot farm going for votes. Doesn’t really make sense anyhow else.
This year they must have scaled back the voting for Dame because they overdid it last year or because they no longer like Dame. (Like a lot of the Bucks fan base, blaming him for every failure.) Problem with bot voting is that your success sort of gives the game away!
So is Giannis that popular? Well we know he isn’t! Lebron and Steph have many times more views on social media. Giannis jersey sales are dropping in the rankings all the time. TV ratings for Bucks games don’t do that well either. (They never did.) So what indicator correlates with the unexpectedly high number of votes that Giannis suddenly received these past few years?
I realize I can’t “prove” all this. And that is the problem. Nobody can prove or disprove it. The NBA for sure won’t ever admit it. But it is unfair, it is wrong and – end of the day – it is doing even Giannis a disservice.
