Player Poll: Perkins, Stevenson a Little Too High on Themselves

I love Sports Illustrated's Players Polls, in which players (or sometimes coaches/executives) are asked their opinion on a league matter. The veil of anonymity and distributed disrespect allows a look into opinions that'd almost assuredly never get aired in the normal flow of the world.

The latest edition has players naming the player who most thinks he is a lot better than he really is. And we have a tie: Boston blowhard Kendrick Perkins and Wizards (um) blowhard DeShawn Stevenson. The leaguewide laughter at Perk's magical reformation as a star (as soon as two Hall-of-Famers showed up) has been expressed around the league before; DeShawn's laughable (and laugh-creating) feud with LeBron surely had an impact on the results as well.

But there are more. See our picks after the jump.

I'm going with The Birdman, who refers to himself by his nickname in the third person, never lets a foul call go by without immediately raising his hand in blame ("I meant to do that!") or expressing incredible disbelief, and ... this.

Brett Pollakoff:Amare Stoudemire. when he has a bad game (like he did against the Bulls), he blames the team for not getting him the ball and calls the other players "subpar." Paul Coro wrote it up yesterday:

Pressed more on the lack of shots, he said, "You said it all right there. I don't know what to say about that." Did Chicago take him out of the game? "Not at all. Tyrus Thomas. Joakim Noah. Who else is down there in the post? Subpar players. They didn't take me out of my game at all. It's just the way it was called."
Asked if the offense was not running through him, he said, "You guys are trying to get me in trouble here but the stat sheet says it all. We'll leave it at that."