Application of PBA awards criteria need fine tuning

There has been questions over the determination of PBA awards over the years. The PBA votes have been the subject of questions in previous years.

The final tally of Calvin Abueva’s win of the 2021 PBA Best Player of the Conference is no different.

Here’s a look at how the point distribution and how it aligns with the PBA criteria:

Notice how the stat category is criminally overrated and the PBA player votes s criminally underrated if the criteria is to be followed.

Here’s he difference between PBA’s actual tally and the conversion of the raw scores to comply with the criteria:

Abueva still won but the gap becomes bigger and the win would be clean.

The PBA Commissioner’s Office continues to be the swing factor despite supposedly having a measly 5% weight. A candidate who is able to get all five votes from the PBA should get little reprieve if he gets dominated in statistics.

The is nothing wrong with the criteria. Its interpretation and application that needs fine tuning.

The PBA needs to fine-tune the application of its awards criteria. It seems the weight assigned to each item are merely props.

The actual result did not matter this time but it will not take long for another set of awards to cause an untoward incident.

2020 PBA BPC, MIP selection  faces controversy

(Published January 22, 2021)

The 2020 PBA Awards Night drew a lot of flack from PBA fans and observers, because some, mostly from the Phoenix side, weren’t satisfied with the results, particularly how votes by the PBA Commissioner’s Office became the swing factor for winner in at least two of the major awards.

Final tally from the Commissioner’s Office showed that the results for the Best Player of the Conference and Most Improved Player races were seemingly decided by votes from the Commissioner’s Office which, incidentally, were awarded to Barangay Ginebra players.

Thing is, the application of the criteria was unfair to both Stanley Pringle and Justin Chua. When the weight of each criteria is applied to the tabulation, Pringle would have won the award against Matthew Wright anyway but Chua should have gotten the nod instead of Prince Caperal.

Allow me to explain.

Since the 2011–12 PBA season, the criteria used to select the PBA Most Valuable Player is 40% on average statistical points, 30% on press and media votes, 25% players’ votes, and 5% Commissioner’s Office.

The tally sheet reported by several media outfits revealed the following results:

It is not divulged how the PBA applies the criteria but the anomaly can easily be spotted. How can the PBA votes, which has a mere weight of 5%, give Pringle a 250 point advantage over Bobby Ray Parks when Parks could only muster a measly 63 point advantage over Pringle in the stats department, which should supposedly has a weight of 40%,  despite having a substantial edge.

If I be allowed to give my input on the criteria interpretation, I would assign the proper weight to each item in the criteria and the leader of the specific item gets an advantage based on how big his lead is over his adversaries.

This would bring the following tally, where Pringle would still nip Wright for top honors:

The Most Improved Player is solely selected by votation: 40% from media, 40% from players, and 20% from the Commissioner’s Office.

Again, Caperal earned a 2,000 point advantage from the 20% PBA votes whereas Justin Chua could only secure a 1,697 edge from the 40% media votes despite having landslide edge.

Observe how Chua could have turned the tables and win by a photo finish if my interpretation had been applied:

As seen, they could have been lucky on the case of Pringle but no so on Chua.

It’s a sad, enraging incident when future actual PBA award winners are not the deserving winners according to standards they, themselves, set.

By Armando M. Bolislis