Howard Beck

But if we all got seven spots, you could give that extra, because then people say, how could you leave X player off your ballot?

Well, because there's only five slots.

I would love to have a sixth and a seventh slot to acknowledge Jokic

each of these guys on some, you know, declining level points wise.

No, but I figured I'd make that plea again as I do about once a year.

And then usually you or Rachel Nichols or somebody mocks me for wanting more ballot spots.

So maybe Adam Silber could give us a fresh look.

He likes giving things fresh.

Yeah, I'd been pitching a version of this to my editor, shout out to Matt Dollinger, since the fall, since we were in L.A.

for core week for the Ringer in October.

Just that it feels to me, as someone who's been covering the league for almost three decades now, and I think this is just objectively true, there have never been more ongoing crises.

And crisis is a strong word.

Crises, scandals, concerns, just functional fixes that need to be made.

Like we had the Tim Donaghy scandal, right?

We've had a gambling scandal.

This one I think is less than that, but this one's going on at the same time that we also have a cap circumvention scandal.

Well, we had cap circumvention or some version of that with Joe Smith back in the day, but that was by itself.

Donaghy was by itself.

Lockouts were by themselves.

What we have right now is a cap circumvention scandal that is seemingly coming to a head soon with some sort of ruling or conclusions from the law firm about what the Clippers did or did not do with Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration.