NBA: Oscar night-approach, timing of awards makes them irrelevant

The NBA last year opted to hand out all its major awards at a show reminiscent of the Oscars. The 2017-18 awards show is Monday. Does it even matter now?

For years, the NBA’s major awards were announced, one by one, as the NBA playoffs were being contested.

It would begin with honors such as Coach of the Year, Most Improved Player and Sixth Man of the Year and progress to the more prestigious Defensive Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year honors and eventually end up naming a Most Valuable Player.

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It wasn’t a perfect system. Every award seemed to be leaked before the official announcement could be made.

But particularly for players from teams still active in the playoffs, it provided them with a moment they could share with their fans as they got their trophy in front of the home crowd.

Then in 2017, that all ended in favor of an Oscar-style celebration with a red carpet, a host, musical acts, presenters and all the various folderol that goes with such an event.

Understand first off that yours truly is not a fan of this type of show. For starters, I don’t watch enough movies or TV or listen to enough contemporary music at this point in life to give a rat’s a … ahem … to really care one way or another.

That’s not entirely fair or accurate. I’ve never really been that interested in what film or show or song bought enough votes to get a trophy. Cynical? Guilty as charged.

I’ve had to follow these events for various newsy reasons and always found them tedious, ponderous and not at all entertaining.

So understand the excitement at learning that the NBA awards would be handed out in this same manner.

The 2017-18 NBA awards will be handed out on Monday at some sort of theatrical type venue in some major city (yeah, I’ve paid that much attention).

These are regular-season awards, folks. By the time they are given out, the regular season will have been over for closer to three months than two — 75 days will have elapsed.

For all the relevance these honors will have at this point, they might as well be handing out the 1967-68 honors instead.

There are two reasons why this approach is an utter failure. The first is the most obvious — most of us among fans and media are much more interested in impending free agency drama and such than dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s from what has been last season since June 8.

The second is less obvious, but more important. The way the awards used to be announced, each honoree was at or near the top of the NBA news cycle for a day. There was plenty of commentary, discussion and agreement/disagreement with each award handed out.

With the honors coming in one giant helping in one night, the air gets sucked out of most of them in terms of national attention.

Roughly 98.6 percent of the post-awards talking points will be to discuss the MVP. About 1.3 percent may or may not devoted to the Rookie of the Year results.

That leaves about 0.1 percent for everything else. The local markets will do their due diligence, to a degree, but will the national media even pause to consider the Most Improved Player race?

The MIP race is of interest to the Brooklyn Nets and their fan base because guard Spencer Dinwiddie is one of the three finalists, along with Victor Oladipo of the Indiana Pacers and Clint Capela of the Houston Rockets.

Throw in the fact that the 2017-18 regular season has been finished for so long that many of the impressions have faded weeks ago and what you have is a show that will satisfy the NBA’s never-ending quest for sponsor cash, the sponsors’ never-ending quest for any sort of publicity that doesn’t involve their product exploding and the NBA’s network partners’ never-ending quest for advertising payola.

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NBA inaction. It’s fan-numbing.