Zaza Pachulia: Potentially the Worst NBA All-Star Ever
The NBA released an article about Zaza Pachulia’s recent success in NBA all-star voting. Zaza Pachulia, the newly acquired center for the Golden State Warriors, is currently averaging 5.6 points per games, 5.8 rebounds per game and 0.5 blocks per game, with a modest player efficiency rating of 15.40 (the league average is 15). While Zaza fits the Warrior’s role nicely, his stats hardly compare to other Western Conference big men, such as Demarcus Cousins of the Sacramento Kings (averaging 28.0 points per game, 10.0 rebounds per game with a PER of 27.0) or Karl Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves (21.9 ppg, 11.9 rbg, 22.8 PER). Why then, is Zaza Pachulia 2nd in the All-Star race, only behind his teammate (and former MVP) Kevin Durant for the Western Conference Frontcourt?
The answer is a new voting system by using social networks. To be selected to an All-Star team, the selection process is half determined by the fans’ vote (and 25% by the media, 25% by the players themselves). Ways for the fans to vote include using Twitter by including the player’s name and a hashtag, #NBAVote or using your Google Account to vote for your favorite players. While a quick search on Twitter can yield tweets with tens of thousands of retweets for certain players, the validity of selecting the best players is being questioned because of the bias of fans. The fans’ engagement with their team, size of the market of certain teams and use of social media can cause great bias in the selection of NBA All-Stars. For example, the tech savvy Bay Area, who’s team is having great success and who’s market is one of the biggest in the NBA currently has 6 players in the top 20 for Western Conference Voting. While potentially 4 are in legitimate conversation for all-star consideration, Zaza Pachulia and Andre Iguodala do not belong on the list.
Recently, Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside publicly spoke against the legitimacy of the voting system. While he is putting up top of the league numbers (17.5 ppg, 14.3 rbg and a 22.08 PER), he is not even in the top 10 for Eastern Conference Frontcourt. Hassan was also angry about a player or a team’s ability to self-promote themselves to garner retweets and get votes. For example, Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid posted this tweet (along with dozens of other tweets voting for himself). The self-promotion practice is legal by rules, but questionable in practice.
While Twitter Voting competition is bringing a lot of attention to the NBA, some of the biases are present in the polling results. Fortunately, the fan vote only accounts for half of the selection process, so outliers like Zaza Pachulia will probably not be an All-Star. But the practices of getting votes should be questioned in future all-star selection processes.
