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While the media may focus on the MVP award and other prestigious honors, reddit has the distinct honor of awarding the LVP trophy. The LEAST Valuable Player. It's a tradition that dates back to 2017, with Monta Ellis winning the trophy in what would be his last year in the league. Other winners include: Jamal Crawford in 2018, Solomon Hill in 2019, Isaiah Thomas in 2020, Aron Baynes in 2021, Facu Campazzo in 2022, Will Barton in 2023, and Jordan Poole last season. Notably, most of those players won the LVP and never saw meaningful minutes again. That said, Poole had a nice little season after his LVP so maybe that tide is turning on the trophy after all.

Who will join our illustrious list? Before we get to that, let's remember the criteria and caveats:

--- Obviously, the worst players in the league are the ones who sit at the end of the bench and don't get any playing time. However, this award focuses on players who log a decent amount of minutes and consequently affected their team's play the most. Simply put: the more you play, the more damage you can do.

--- And that actual "damage" is important. If you're on a tanking team, no one cares about your poor play; it may even be a positive. We also tend to ignore young players (under 22) who are still developing and can't be expected to be solid players yet.

--- Similarly, we don't want to judge players within the context of their salary any more than the actual MVP does. We also don't weigh in injuries. If you want to factor in salary and injuries into your LVP ballots, there are no shortage of big name candidates to choose from this season. However, at the LVP offices, we focus on players' on-court performance instead.

--- We also wanted to note that this yearly column can come across as a little mean spirited, which is not our intention. Even the worst player in the NBA is in the top 99% percentile at their sport and making more money than most of us could dream about. And to be fair, even the worst player in the league probably costs his team only a couple of games. Hardly anyone has a VORP ("value over replacement player") worse than -2, so they shouldn't be the scapegoat for an entire organization. In many cases, they're simply played too much or played in the wrong role. But when the stakes are this high, it's fair to criticize players or their teams for that negative impact.

######LEAST valuable player ballot