1) NBA Comeback Player of the Year (1981-1986)

Aiming to capitalize on the league’s burgeoning popularity, the NBA introduced a new set of award trophies in the early ’80s. While the Defensive Player of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year trophies have endured to this day, the Comeback Player of the Year proved less successful. In fact, you could argue it completely backfired. A large part of the issue was the enigmatic nature and qualifications of the award, i.e., what constitutes a comeback? How do you measure the ability to “come back?” But the bigger concern for the NBA was having the award voted on by independent media members, who consistently granted it to players who reflected poorly on the league’s biggest ongoing public relations issue. Case in point was the inaugural winner in ’80-’81, Bernard King, who put up terrific numbers for the Warriors after spending most of the ’79-’80 season in a drug rehab facility, while simultaneously facing trial for sexual assault charges. Then there was Micheal Ray Richardson, winning Comeback Player of the Year in ’84-’85 after getting suspended for half the ’83-’84 season by the Nets due to failed drug tests. Even when substance abuse wasn’t involved, the NBA was still getting negative headlines from the award, including Paul Westphal and Gus Williams each earning it after lengthy contract dispute hold outs. The rightfully concerned league office took action by instituting the Most Improved Player award in ’85-’86, then discontinuing Comeback Player of the Year starting in ’86-’87. Yes, that means we had one season in which Comeback Player of the Year and Most Improved Player were both awarded. Marques Johnson was an appropriate final winner of Comeback Player of the Year award, based on his bounce back from a disgruntled, drug-addled first season with the Clippers. The inaugural Most Improved Player trophy went to Alvin Robertson, setting the stage for its more benign status as honoring a young player making a significant leap.

2) Adolph Rupp Trophy (1972-2015)

Speaking of institutions distancing themselves from negative connotations, the Adolph Rupp Trophy was presented annually for over four decades until it unceremoniously disappeared in 2016. It was established by the Kentucky Commonwealth Athletic Club for the ’71-’72 NCAA season to “honor the legacy” of Rupp, the legendary Wildcats coach whose retirement was happening at the end of the year (though not voluntarily). While Rupp’s personal feelings and plans can be debated endlessly, there’s no doubt he’s become an embodiment of the racist history of college basketball. Kentucky did not have a single Black player until ’70-’71, Rupp’s penultimate season, and their loss to the all-Black starting lineup of Texas Western in the 1966 National Final is considered a turning point of racial justice in the sport. Of course, the other issue that beset the Adolph Rupp Trophy from the beginning was the already existing glut of awards for the best player in college basketball (more on that below). Bill Walton was the winner of the first three Adolph Rupp Trophies and Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky was the final honoree in 2015. More appropriate to Rupp’s career, there was also an Adolph Rupp Cup later established by the same organization in 2002, awarded to the best coach in college basketball. That award was also discontinued in 2015, with the final honoree being, fittingly, Kentucky’s John Calipari.

3) Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award (1969-2014)

The novelty of successful undersized players has long been a fascination of basketball fans but actually honoring these short kings with a trophy was a well-meaning idea that was doomed to fail. First awarded in 1969, the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award was voted on by a panel of coaches and given to the player who most excelled on the court “in spite of their height.” It was established by the Naismith Hall of Fame and it was named after Dr. James Naismith’s late daughter-in-laws. The actual qualification criteria was any college basketball player at any level listed at 6’0″ or shorter. This did open up an interesting effect in that the award was sometimes given to Division II players, such as Kenyon College’s John Rinka in 1970 (listed height: 5’9″). The list of winners also includes plenty of familiar names, like Wake Forest’s Muggsy Bogues (who was the shortest player to ever win it, at 5’3″) in 1987, UTEP’s Tim Hardaway (6’0″) in 1989, Eastern Michigan’s Earl Boykins (5’5″) in 1998, and Washington’s Nate Robinson (5’9″) in 2005. Starting in 1984, the award was also given to the best women’s college player at 5’6″ or under (later increased to 5’8″), with notable winners including Louisiana Tech’s Kim Mulkey in 1984, UConn’s Jennifer Rizzotti in 1996, and Tennessee’s Kara Lawson in 2003. The writing on the wall for the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award started in 2004, when the Hall of Fame began awarding the Bob Cousy Award to the best point guard in college basketball. Ten years later, they further introduced awards for the other four positions on the court and simultaneously shut down Frances Pomeroy Naismith awarding.

4) IBM Award (1984-2002)

Going all the way back to its early days as a punch-card manufacturer, the IBM company has been one of the leading corporate technological innovators in America. In 1984, the same year they started co-developing the first modern computer operating system with Microsoft, IBM also began giving out a yearly NBA award called the Pivotal Player Award. It was so named to imply that the winner was not necessarily the most valuable or best player in the league, but specifically the most pivotal to their team’s success. Over a decade before John Hollinger revolutionized basketball advanced stats by formulating PER, IBM had its own similar computer formula to determine what “pivotal” meant. Using an algorithm that combined individual stats with team stats and success, IBM purported to be mathematically determining every NBA player’s true worth to their roster. Whoever had the highest score would receive the trophy, which was eventually renamed simply the IBM Award. Though the award winners list is a who’s who of ’80s and ’90s superstars, it’s notable that the IBM Award winner and league MVP winner overlapped only three times: David Robinson in 1995, Shaquille O’Neal in 2000, and Tim Duncan in 2002, the last year that the trophy was awarded. 2002 is also a significant last year for the IBM Award to be handed out, as that’s also the year Hollinger began publishing his annual Pro Basketball Prospectus, which brought PER and other advanced stats and analytics to the masses.

5) Helms Foundation College Basketball Player of the Year (1944-1983)
6) UPI NCAA Player of the Year (1955-1996)

Just as the NIT and NCAA Tournament battled in the ’40s and ’50s for college basketball postseason supremacy, the late ’70s and early ’80s was the heyday of competing Player of the Year awards. In fact, from a stretch of 1977 to 1983, there was not one, not two, but nine major outlets awarding their pick for the best player in men’s college basketball. While most of those awards have endured to this day, the Naismith Award has emerged over the years as the most prestigious and definitive. But it’s not the oldest of these awards, not even close. The Sporting News Player of the Year award (still active) was the first, starting in 1942. Two years later, the Helms Foundation College Basketball Player of the Year was first awarded, to DePaul’s George Mikan. He was deemed as such by the L.A.-based Helms Foundation, an amateur non-profit athletic foundation that also handed out a prestigious college football award. The award was discontinued in 1983, as the Helms Foundation was beginning to dissolve, but not before its founders retroactively awarded the Player of the Year designation all the way back to 1905. Not only that, they also boldly declared a college men’s champion all the way back to 1901, 38 years before the NCAA Tournament even started. The UPI Player of the Year award also presaged the Naismith Award, starting in 1955 when La Salle’s Tom Gola was the inaugural winner. At the time, UPI (United Press International) was the biggest news agency in the world but by the mid ’90s it had declined significantly due in large part to the rise of rival Associated Press (AP). AP also began naming a college Player of the Year in 1961 (Ohio State’s Jerry Lucas) and continues on to this day while UPI shut down its awards division in 1996 as part of an ownership restructuring. If you’re wondering, the other major Player of the Year awards that persist to this day are the Wooden Award (given by the Los Angeles Athletic Club), the NABC Award, and the Oscar Robertson Trophy (given by the U.S. Basketball Writers’ Association), while the other defunct one is the Adolph Rupp Award, detailed above. As for that brief stretch in which all nine awards were given, the three players to sweep the Player of the Year nonet-fecta were Marques Johnson in 1977, Larry Bird in 1979, and Ralph Sampson in 1982.

7) Player of the Seeding Games (2020)

Maybe this one isn’t defunct so much as laying in wait to return? Let’s hope not, honestly. In planning out the NBA re-start during the COVID-19 pandemic, a major consideration was how to handle the remainder of the ’19-’20 regular season. When the league shut down on March 11, 2020, each team still had somewhere between 16 and 18 games left in their schedule, so there was much left to be decided vis a vis playoff positioning. To keep things as fair as possible while still reasonably limiting human interaction, the NBA invited every team that still had realistic playoff aspirations (22 out of 30) to “The Bubble” in Orlando and scheduled each in eight initial “Seeding Games” to finalize the regular season. Late in that stage of play, the league announced that there would be specific awards for the Seeding Games, including a Player of the Seeding Games. Unofficially rechristened as the “Bubble MVP,” the award was voted on by a panel of journalists and broadcasters who were on hand at the Disney World campus. Damian Lillard was the unanimous winner after averaging 37.6 points and 9.6 assists per game, while leading the Trail Blazers to a 6-2 record and a spot in the Play-In Games. Devin Booker finished second in voting and was named 1st-Team All-Seeding Games, as were T.J. Warren, Luka Doncic, and James Harden, while the Suns’ Monty Williams earned Coach of the Seeding Games honors. The NBA did eventually also hand out its standard full-season awards during the Bubble playoffs, with Giannis Antetokounmpo earning MVP, Ja Morant Rookie of the Year, and Nick Nurse Coach of the Year.