Basketball, Listed

A dedication to basketball history, catalogued and presented in convenient list form.

Expired tokens: Seven defunct major basketball awards

While awards like league MVP and Rookie of the Year have become iconic signifiers of individual success, these seven basketball awards lost their meaning and then their existence.

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

The NBA introduced a new set of award trophies in the early ’80s. While Defensive Player of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year 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?” This left it open to be consistently granted to players who reflected poorly on the league. This included the inaugural winner Bernard King, who earned the award in 1981 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 it in ’84-’85 after getting suspended for half the prior season by the Nets due to failed drug tests. Even when substance abuse wasn’t involved, you still had Paul Westphal and Gus Williams earning the trophy after lengthy contract dispute hold outs. The league office took action by instituting the Most Improved Player award as a replacement in ’85-’86. But, due to the timing, we did have one season in which Comeback Player of the Year and Most Improved Player were both awarded. Marques Johnson was an appropriate final winner, based on his bounce back from a drug-addled first season with the Clippers.

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. 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 and 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 doomed to fail. Named after James Naismith’s daughter-in-law and 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.” 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. The list of winners also includes plenty of familiar names, like Wake Forest’s Muggsy Bogues (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, with notable winners including Louisiana Tech’s Kim Mulkey in 1984 and Tennessee’s Kara Lawson in 2003. The Hall of Fame began awarding the Bob Cousy Award to the best point guard in college basketball in 2004 and soon after discontinued the Frances Pomeroy Naismith trophy.

4) IBM Award (1984-2002)

In 1984, the same year they started co-developing the first modern computer operating system with Microsoft, IBM also began handed out a yearly NBA honor 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.

“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.”

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

Started in 1942, the Sporting News Player of the Year was the first trophy to annually honor a men’s college basketball player. Trophy creep continued over the decades, culminating in a stretch of 1977 to 1983, when there was nine major outlets with a Player of the Year trophy. Seven of them continue to this day (including the Sporting News) but two fell by the wayside. The mouthful Helms Foundation College Basketball Player of the Year was first awarded to DePaul’s George Mikan in 1944. was discontinued in 1983, as the Helms Foundation (an athletics no-profit based in L.A.) was beginning to dissolve, but not before its founders boldly, retroactively awarded the Player of the Year designation all the way back to 1905. The UPI Player of the Year award started in 1955 with La Salle’s Tom Gola as the inaugural winner. At the time, UPI (United Press International) was the biggest news agency in the world but by the mid ’90s had declined significantly and was overtaken by the Associated Press (AP). AP also began naming a college Player of the Year in 1961 and continues on to this day while UPI shut down its awards division in 1996. As for that brief stretch in which all nine awards were granted, 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. When the league shut down operations on March 11, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 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 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. The NBA did eventually also hand out its standard full-season awards, including Giannis Antetokounmpo earning league MVP..

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