THE recent PBA Awards Night drew a lot more noise than the usual partisan cheers and jeers, mostly because some fans weren't happy to see votes by the PBA Commissioner's Office decide at least two of the major honors handed out.
A check on the final tabulation showed that the vote from the Commissioner's Office, which comprises 5 percent of the the value of the tally, swayed the results of the Best Player of the Conference and Most Improved Player races, which, incidentally, both went to Barangay Ginebra players.
LOOK:
No wonder a number of fans, especially Phoenix supporters and those who simply don't like Ginebra, took to social media to air their displeasure after votes from the league enabled Pringle to beat Matthew Wright in the closest BPC race in history - and, for that matter, Caperal to beat Justin Chua in a similarly tight MIP battle.
So how come league officials ended up actually casting votes for their own individual awards?
That practice started during the time of former commissioner Noli Eala when the PBA did away with a four-man committee - made up of representatives of three media organizations and the TV coveror - that accounted for 10 percent of the value of the votes (to go with the 30% each on statistics and media and players' votes) because of a number of controversies that marred its selections.
What the PBA did was give 10% of the votes to the TV coveror and 5% to the Commissioner's Office, prior to another change in 2011 during the time of Chito Salud when the TV coveror's vote was removed and its weight in the final tally added to the value of stats, with the Commissioner's Office's 5% retained.
That format - 40% for stats, 30% for media votes, 25% for players' votes, and 5% for the PBA vote - remained to this day, even if it's no doubt odd to see league officials getting involved in the selection of its individual awardees.
When the comments sections of our Facebook and Twitter pages were bombarded with angry reactions from readers after the announcement of the results on Sunday, we asked around and this is what we got.
The current league leadership is also thinking along the same line, that officials have no business meddling in the balloting for the yearend and conference awards other than supervising the selection process.
Reformatting the MVP selection process to do away with the Commissioner's Office's vote was, in fact, among a raft of proposals that officials planned to present before the league's board of governors.
According to insiders that SPIN.ph talked to, the plan is to remove the PBA vote and distribute its value, leaving statistics, media votes, and players' votes to decide the winners of the league's major individual awards.
Unfortunately, that plan got pushed into the backburner as the PBA dealt with the more important task of mounting a bubble for its 2020 season. The proposal eventually got overtaken by events as Saturday's announcements once again sparked accusations that cast the league in a bad light.
Come to think of it, that controversy could've been avoided if the league acted quickly enough.
But is it too late to put the proposal in motion? Of course not.
Get more of the latest sports news & updates on SPIN.ph
NOTICE ON UNAUTHORIZED AND UNLAWFUL USE, PUBLICATION, AND/OR DISSEMINATION OF SPIN.PH CONTENT: Please be notified that any unauthorized and unlawful use, publication, and/or dissemination of Spin.ph’s content and/or materials is a direct violation of its legal and exclusive rights to the same, and shall be subject to appropriate legal action/s.
