00:00Sam, some intriguing, you know, NBA awards and such this year. We had the play-in games
00:06and the opportunity to vote on awards while games were going on, which sort of
00:12goes against what the NBA was saying, is that these play-in games were kind of playoff games.
00:16But if that's the case, how did they allow this to happen? And we had the rookie of the year
00:21potentially involved in this. What do you make of this whole scenario? And, you know, I got to tell
00:25you, I kind of feel like this is the last time we're going to go through this. I feel like
00:28the
00:29NBA has got to change this going into next season. Yeah, I think that's a spot on observation,
00:35Craig, because it really stems from the fact that you have this new rule in the NBA and the NBA
00:40in
00:41general has been trying to basically year by year create new rules to combat a few issues where the
00:47regular season doesn't matter as much. So then, OK, they go ahead and add play-in games to make the
00:53end of the season more important. OK, that doesn't work. They go in and add an in-season tournament
00:58to make the season even more compelling. And then they add a 65 game rule requirement for players to
01:05meet. So to basically incentivize them to play more games or they won't be eligible for awards.
01:10It's because we've had that patchwork of new rules and corrections and changes that we're now in the
01:17scenario we had last week where the voting typically for regular season awards is due before the play-in games
01:25start. Those playing games aren't supposed to be taken into account, whether it's consciously or
01:30subconsciously by voters. But because of that 65 game rule this year and you had two players,
01:36Luka Doncic and Kate Cunningham, appeal the fact that they weren't going to be eligible. They had
01:41extemporaneous circumstances where they wanted to be eligible for the awards. The NBA had to give
01:46itself time to figure out whether or not they would be eligible. That created this 48-hour window where
01:52those playing games actually overlapped with the voting deadline for awards. The deadline was pushed
01:57back. Voters were told not to take it into account. But you have a lot very vocal about how they
02:03actually couldn't help themselves because it's only human nature to take it into account. I think
02:07Kendrick Perkins talked about how it was going to influence his vote. Rachel Nichols talked about it,
02:12Bill Simmons, other people with awards votes out there. And what we saw was it really did impact
02:18voting. I took a look at the prediction market data, which tracks the voting on awards. And
02:23rookie of the year was really the most interesting one where all season it's been Cooper flag or
02:28Concanepo, kind of a 50-50 race, so close that the favorite actually flipped four times in the last
02:35week of the regular season. So it's really the biggest market where no one knew what actually voters
02:40were going to decide. Then you fast forward to the day before the play-in. Concanepo was playing in a
02:46game
02:47against the Miami Heat, and that game wasn't supposed to count. His performance wasn't supposed
02:52to be taken into account. The odds for Concanepo actually shot up a little bit before the game,
02:57with some people thinking, maybe voters will take it into account that he has a really good
03:00performance tonight. What people didn't anticipate was that he would have a terrible,
03:05terrible postseason debut, again, in a game that wasn't supposed to count. By halftime,
03:09I think he was about two for ten from the field, and his odds plummeted all the way down to
03:1332%.
03:14So in the morning, he was 50%, and then half of the game later that wasn't supposed to count,
03:2030%. By the end of the game, Connepo was benched. He went two of 12 from the field,
03:24and Cooper flag by that time was a 70% favorite to win the award. Again, a guy who hadn't
03:29played
03:29a game in over a week is now shooting up in the odds. So it's really interesting to see how
03:35the
03:36betting market activity actually changed on these games when they weren't supposed to count.
03:40Now you've got another guy who was up for an award in Denny Abia, also played in a play-in
03:45game that
03:45night. He actually had a really good game. He had 40 points. He had over 12 rebounds,
03:51seven assists, just a great performance. That wasn't enough to directly influence the voting.
03:56His odds only shot up a little bit. So what we're seeing is kind of a mixed bag with how
04:01much things
04:02actually impacted it. In some award markets where it was really a tight race, voting probably did get
04:09impacted by these playing games. And again, that was something the NBA told voters not to do.
04:14But like you mentioned, Craig, because this is kind of a weird year where they had this new rule,
04:19where they had this thing they had to allow for, that created this opportunity and won again that
04:25they'd be able to definitely try not to repeat next year. So whether that's them changing the 65 game
04:30rule, whether that's them changing the voting timeline, it just seems like something they didn't
04:34take into account, but definitely is impacting decisions. And we'll know who won rookie of the
04:39year, maybe in about a week or two. The NBA hasn't announced it when, but when they do announce it,
04:45it looks like it'll probably be Cooper flag. When the season ended, it was probably a coin flip,
04:50maybe going to be con canipple. So it'll be really interesting to see how those results play out.
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