The first thing you need to know is First Take is an entertainment show.
It is WWE or Real Housewives for Sports Media. The reason it is successful is that they argue a lot. There are screaming and wild takes. That is where sports media is as a genre right now. It is like an angle in Wrestling. You have heels and babyfaces and, in this case, a feud.
You have two former basketball players arguing over something really stupid, if we are being honest.
Nikola Jokic, if he wins his third MVP in a row, is deserving of all three. They are regular season awards, and he has proven his value to the Nuggets. When you lose a good player, all teams will suffer, but it has been proven that if the Nuggets lose Jokic, they are historically bad. He is putting up historic numbers for a center, and his team is the best team in the West.
You could argue that one of the other two years he won it, someone else could have won it, but that is every year with the MVP. There are at least five players off the top of my head that, if they won the MVP this year, that wouldn’t bother me at all because they are deserving.
Kendrick Perkins wants to be like Stephen A. Smith and Charles Barkley. It is a smart move because that is where the money is at. He doesn’t have the natural charisma and charm as Barkley, and he hasn’t been in the game as long as Smith, but he is learning that if you say wild things, people will pay more attention.
If you add a racial component to it, you will get a lot of attention. You have to be careful with that because there are many racial issues in our country and with sports, so we want to make sure when we bring it up, it isn’t trivial and makes sense.
They are trying to prove that Jokic, Dirk, and Steve Nash’s MVPs were race-related, which is a bit of a stretch. Since there have been years where they have been serious debates over two black players getting the award. Don’t get me wrong; there are some heavy biases in media. Is it possible that some media just like Nash better, and that is why they voted him over Kobe in a year? Kobe deserved it. That is possible. Is there any evidence that is out there that people have something against Joel Embiid that they prefer Jokic? If there is, and if there is a racial part of it, Perkins has to bring that to the forefront. Jokic, Embiid, Giannis, Tatum, etc., etc. all seem well-liked in the media, so it comes down to the personal preference of that media member.
Some media members have issues with black players, but are those players the ones in the running for the MVP? These are nuance topics, and First Take isn’t a place for nuance. It is a place for barbershop arguments, and that is ok. Just remember that is all it is, and most of it is fake and make-believe for TV, no different than Vince McMahon running things behind the scenes.
Flip the page for Redick and Kendrick Perkins arguing stupidly about the MVP and some Twitter reactions.
