How Player Reputations Are Really Formed

The Crowd After the Game

After the final buzzer of the 2011 NBA Finals, the conversation moved quickly from basketball to character. Miami had lost the series to Dallas, and LeBron James—who averaged far below his usual scoring level—became the center of the story. The criticism did not stay confined to missed shots or tactical hesitation. It drifted into questions about courage, identity, and inner strength, as though six games had revealed something essential about the person.

This shift is familiar in sports. A player struggles in a decisive moment and suddenly the discussion becomes moral rather than technical. Fans and commentators begin distributing praise and blame as if they were judges, and in a sense they are.

Adam Smith, writing in the eighteenth century about how human beings evaluate one another, offers a useful way to understand what is happening in moments like this. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith argues that people form judgments by imagining how an impartial observer would view a situation. We mentally step outside ourselves and ask whether the action we are watching—or the one we ourselves have taken—seems fitting to the circumstances.

Basketball reputations grow out of this process. The crowd tries to judge the player as a fair spectator might judge him. The difficulty is that crowds are rarely impartial.

The Imagined Judge

Smith believed that human beings care deeply about approval. We want to be praised, but more importantly we want to deserve praise. Because our own perspective is biased by pride and loyalty, we imagine what he called an impartial spectatorThe impartial spectator is Adam Smith’s concept of an imagined fair-minded observer whose perspective we adopt when judging whether conduct is appropriate or praiseworthy. —a calmer viewpoint that can assess whether our conduct appears proper to the situation.

When fans discuss players, something similar happens. People attempt to look at a performance and ask: was that the right decision? Did the player behave as his role required? Did he show the composure or restraint the moment demanded?

Those questions correspond closely to what Smith called proprietyPropriety, in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, is the fitness or appropriateness of an action to the situation that prompted it, judged by whether a reasonable spectator would find the response natural and proportionate. , the idea that actions should fit their circumstances. A superstar late in a playoff game carries certain expectations: assertiveness, responsibility, a willingness to take the decisive shot. When those expectations are not met, criticism naturally follows.

But Smith also warned that spectators rarely judge with perfect balance. Visible outcomes—victory or defeat—tend to inflate praise and intensify blame. A successful ending makes earlier actions appear wiser; a failed ending makes them appear foolish. What should be a measured judgment often becomes something louder.

Sports culture amplifies this tendency.

When Failure Expands Into Character

The reaction to the 2011 Finals illustrates the pattern. LeBron James did not play well enough for the role he occupied. A Smithian spectator could reasonably say that a player of his stature needed to be more assertive, especially in crucial possessions. That criticism concerns propriety: the match between responsibility and action.

Yet the conversation did not stop there. The series became a sweeping verdict on his character. The blame expanded beyond the specific basketball decisions that had gone wrong and hardened into a narrative about fear, weakness, or psychological fragility.

Smith anticipated exactly this phenomenon. When outcomes are emotionally costly—especially public failures—spectators exaggerate the moral significance of the result. The disappointment of the moment pushes blame beyond the boundaries that a calm observer might draw.

The important point is not that criticism was entirely unfair. Rather, the scale of condemnation far exceeded the underlying conduct. One disappointing series became a symbolic failure of the person himself.

Basketball reputations often take shape in precisely this way.

Reputation Moves More Slowly Than Reality

Sometimes the distortion works in the opposite direction. A player’s conduct changes, but the public image does not.

Russell Westbrook’s later career provides a revealing example. During the 2023–24 season with the Los Angeles Clippers, he appeared in sixty-eight games largely as a bench player, averaging modest scoring numbers while contributing energy, rebounding, and playmaking in a limited role.

What mattered most, however, was the adjustment itself. A former MVP accepted reduced minutes and a different function within the team structure. In Smith’s language, this kind of adaptation shows self-commandSelf-command is Smith’s term for the capacity to govern one’s emotions and ambitions so that one’s conduct remains fitting to the circumstances, even when pride or desire pushes in another direction. —the ability to regulate one’s ambitions so that they fit the situation.

Yet public discussion often continued to treat Westbrook as though he were still responsible for fulfilling the identity of a high-usage superstar. Criticism focused on inefficiency or turnover-prone stretches without acknowledging the more basic shift in role that had taken place.

Here the gap lies between praiseworthinessPraiseworthiness, for Smith, is the quality of genuinely deserving approval, which may differ from whether one actually receives it, since public opinion can lag behind or distort true merit. and actual praise. Smith believed that these two do not always align. Spectators sometimes fail to recognize conduct that deserves approval because their judgments remain attached to an older narrative.

Reputation, once formed, resists revision.

The Visibility Problem

Another distortion emerges from the way spectators perceive the game itself. Certain forms of excellence are easy to admire because they are visually dramatic—difficult jump shots, explosive drives, buzzer-beaters. Other contributions operate quietly inside the structure of play.

The 2021 Western Conference semifinal between the Utah Jazz and the Los Angeles Clippers produced a vivid example. In Game 6 the Clippers erupted for a barrage of three-pointers, including seven from Terance Mann, and Utah’s defense unraveled. Much of the blame quickly settled on Rudy Gobert, the Jazz center and former Defensive Player of the Year.

The criticism had a visual logic. Gobert appeared to be caught between responsibilities: protecting the rim or closing out on shooters spaced around the perimeter. From the camera’s perspective, he looked perpetually late.

But the impartial spectator would ask a broader question. What options actually existed within the defensive scheme? If perimeter defenders failed to contain penetration, the center would inevitably be forced into impossible decisions—guarding the paint while also covering shooters beyond the arc.

In other words, the most visible defender became the symbolic cause of the collapse. Spectators blamed the figure they could most easily see rather than tracing responsibility through the entire defensive structure.

Smith’s framework helps clarify why this happens. Human judgment is strongly influenced by what can be vividly imagined. When a failure has a clear visual focal point, resentment condenses around it.

Learning What to Admire

Occasionally the process moves in a healthier direction. Spectators gradually learn to recognize forms of excellence that once escaped notice.

Jrue Holiday’s role in Boston’s 2024 championship run provides a small example of this shift. Holiday did not dominate the Finals statistically, yet his influence was unmistakable. In Game 2 he scored efficiently while controlling the defensive point of attack and stabilizing the offense with disciplined decision-making.

What spectators began to appreciate was not a single spectacular act but a pattern of fitting responses—choosing when to score, when to pass, when to pressure the opposing ball handler, when to defer. The performance made visible a kind of basketball intelligence that had always been present but had not always been widely praised.

Smith believed admiration becomes more reliable when spectators learn to value propriety rather than spectacle. Instead of asking which action looked most dramatic, they begin asking which action best suited the circumstances.

Holiday’s reputation rose partly because the championship moment allowed that quieter excellence to become legible.

When Success Clarifies Greatness

Nikola Jokic’s 2023 Finals performance illustrates a slightly different dynamic. By the time Denver defeated Miami for the title, Jokic had already established himself as one of the most unusual superstars the league had seen. His style—methodical, unflashy, built around passing vision and positional patience—did not immediately resemble traditional forms of basketball dominance.

Yet during the championship series he averaged thirty points, fourteen rebounds, and more than seven assists per game, culminating in a Game 5 performance that secured Denver’s first title.

The achievement did not suddenly create Jokic’s greatness, but it changed the way spectators perceived it. Success acted like a bright light illuminating patterns that had previously been harder to see. What once seemed unconventional began to appear inevitable.

Smith observed that fortune often enlarges praise. In some cases this distorts judgment, but in others it helps spectators converge on an excellence that had already existed. The outcome provides a shared focal point around which admiration can organize itself.

The difference lies in whether the praise merely follows the victory or whether the victory helps reveal the qualities that produced it.

Judging the Game More Fairly

Basketball culture will never eliminate praise and blame. The sport is too dramatic, and the stakes too visible, for that. What Smith’s perspective offers instead is a small correction to the way reputations are formed.

The impartial spectator asks a few simple questions. Did the player’s decision fit the situation? Did his role impose responsibilities that were ignored or fulfilled? Are spectators reacting to the underlying conduct, or merely to the emotional shock of the result?

When those questions guide the judgment, reputations begin to look different. Some failures appear less catastrophic. Some quiet performances appear more admirable. And some championships reveal patterns of excellence that had been present all along.

Basketball conversations will still involve argument and emotion, but the verdicts become slightly more proportionate—less like the roar of a crowd, and a little closer to the calm voice of the spectator we imagine when we try to judge fairly.

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Footnotes / Philosophy Terms

1. Impartial spectator ↩

The impartial spectator is Adam Smith’s concept of an imagined fair-minded observer whose perspective we adopt when judging whether conduct is appropriate or praiseworthy.

2. Propriety ↩

Propriety, in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, is the fitness or appropriateness of an action to the situation that prompted it, judged by whether a reasonable spectator would find the response natural and proportionate.

3. Self-command ↩

Self-command is Smith’s term for the capacity to govern one’s emotions and ambitions so that one’s conduct remains fitting to the circumstances, even when pride or desire pushes in another direction.

4. Praiseworthiness ↩

Praiseworthiness, for Smith, is the quality of genuinely deserving approval, which may differ from whether one actually receives it, since public opinion can lag behind or distort true merit.