Anonymous player polls are simply the best.



Can we start there as an agreed upon baseline of this entertaining exercise?



In this pro sports world where clichés rule the day and candor is hard to come by, where everything from personal politics to fear of reprisal compels so many to hide their real feelings and opinions, there’s this journalistic loophole that leads us to the truth about how these athletes think. About each other, about coaches, teams, the refs, the league. All of it.



The inaugural NBA edition of The Athletic’s player poll was no different.



Thanks to the hard work of our 30 beat writers who gathered the results from March 16 to April 1, we now know that a player who you have likely never heard of is the most feared man in all the hoops land, that the grumpiest coach of them all is also the most admired, that the superstar who might win MVP is somehow not seen as franchise centerpiece material by his peers and...