User Reviews

Well the title NBA Awards is really as short and yet as telling as it gets. The director here is fairly experienced Michael Dempsey, who's been in charge of other awards ceremonies and here he gives us the 2018 take on the best the National Basketball Association had to offer. This includes categories like Best Coach, Best 6th Man, Best Rookie, Most Improved Player, Best Defense Player and a few more, obviously of course also MVP. The latter went to James Harden from the Gouston Rockets, everything else I won't mention. The show ran for approximately 1.5 hours and was hosted by Anthony Anderson from Black-ish. There is also a brief reference to that show where they are joking around a bit. In general, the atmosphere is very chill and very light. Anderson is one of the factors contributing to that, even if he really does not have a lot of screen time at all. Other reasons would include the presenters that are haviing a fun time too like the Asian guy from The Hangover who talks about how he thought he'd present with another Tyson and it's funny enough already when he climbs that chest. I won't go much into detail about the winners like I said, but this show was pretty nice and had it all what I would expect from an awards show. The competitive awards, no stupid categories decided by viewers and most votes and of course a lifetime achievement award eventually. Honestly they could have given out 10 of them and they all would have been deserving, which does not always feel like that at the Oscars. It felt pretty good here though and it was nice to see such a condensed and focused awards show. If I think of stuff like music awards shows that are really a mess with 75% singing and the rest awards, then here it is really what it should be about and what it is about. Shaq, Barkley and a few others were welcome inclusions for NBA fans of the older days too, so it is really something for everybody. Honestly, with how much they rushed in all these awards in only the first 30 minutes, I wondered what will come afterwards and if it will drag then because they were doing so much so early on, but it did not drag and stayed entertaining throughout the entire show from beginning to end. This is probably closer to 4 stars out of 5 than 2 stars out of 5, but not entirely getting there yet. Not much missing anyway, because also the more comedic fun parts when we see several NBA players interact are worth the inclusion. There was pretty much nothing I would have kept out and I also think it was a good decision to have showbiz people present all the awards. There were enough NBA players around anyway already and maybe the only somewhat even better solution I could think of would have been to have these awards presented by older players that are retired now. But it is okay this way too because honestly most of the presenters made sense and even if I probably did not agree with each and every single winner, they are without a doubt deserving. A bit of a pity this is so underseen. I hope the show keeps going for years to come and they also do not change too much about how it goes and what (not) to include. This was a success. If you love the NBA (and not just like it the way I do), then this is almost a must-see.