Monday, December 10, 2012

Monday Poll in Review: 2012 PSP Top Ten

Without any ado, here's your Top Ten:
1--Jason Wheeler ( 6 )
2--Constantine Federov ( 8 )
3--Chad George
4--Alex Berdnikov ( 1 )
5--Marcello Margott ( 2 )
6--Ryan Greenspan
7--Jason Edwards ( 4 )
8--Axel Gaudin
9--Mikhail Knyazev
9--Sam Monville

Surprised? I can't imagine why--unless, like the slackers you are, you weren't paying attention. Without focusing (for now) on the ballot stuffing effort by a whole country let's look at the Top Ten as a group and compare the popular choices with the PBA statistical top ten. Five players appear on both lists. [PBA rank in parenthesis after each player's name.] The popular vote is, beyond the ballot stuffing, a reflection of reputation and name recognition. It is also an acknowledgement that winning matters in the real world. And, with the ballot stuffing effort from the UK, it also trends toward a Eurocentric list. (The ballot stuffing also tended to skew the percentages as the Euro voters were focused on their guy winning and not so much on picking a top ten--beyond checking off on other familiar Euro players.)
So how did the popular vote compare to the statistical vote? Which one is better top to bottom? Does it matter that I restricted the popular vote to the top thirty PBA ranked players? Why?
The other interesting question is how do voters determine the popular vote? Obviously in the case of the UK push for Wheeler it is national pride [of a sort] lifting up a native son so they can all share in his accomplishment. (Except it's really their accomplishment on his behalf.) Once upon a time the event results--to a degree--and the name dropping in the major magazines informed the fan base who the best players were (in the opinion of a select few.) Now there's the talking heads on the webcast, the PBA statistical leaders and the already well-known names from years past. Is one form of information about the players better than the other? Are any of them particularly informative or accurate?
What do you think? Pick this list apart or post your own top ten.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im so glad these votes are over. Now all we have to suffer with is the endless projekt k flogging links on fb.

Baca Loco said...

But they aren't! PBA is doing their version now! Isn't that exciting! Wow, look! Everything has an exclamation point!