MVP (this is our year)

In further proof that FreeDarko has put the media on notice, new NBA bias, irrational exuberance, and a lack of respect for conventional basketball wisdom reign.

The leaks are in, and it's Nash. I'm not going to dispute just how indispensable Shaq is, but at some point you've got to give the team guy some. Shaq makes others better by giving them space to work; Nash practically tells them what shot to take, and lands two of his running mates in the All-Star game, his entire starting five in Denver one way or another. Face it, he helped every single Sun find themselves in what turned out to be career years all around. You can make a Shaq-like argument (Shaq-like, I said) for Yao, if you look at T-Mac and Mike James. Nash: unprecedented, or at least totally unique in this season. He's almost too valuable, to the point that it's almost embarrasing for the league, like if I had a personal chef that fed me by hand.

Can't we let that defense thing slide for a year? There is a defensive player award. . . until there's an offensive player award, I'm not going to believe that the MVP isn't secretly all about offensive proficiency. What if someone were of only average defensive ability? Would that disqualify them like some think it should Nash? Or even hurt their case? By this logic, it should.

And, not that this should be a measure of a MVP candidate, but doesn't Dirk's wan postseason showing make us reconsider how important Nash was to his development? Like he'd figured out how to play his regular season on his own, but could have used a little more Nash to get him through the training wheels period of his playoff career?

Conclusion: the NBA is a league of stars. They are all either very different, or almost too much like each other. Why not give out four or five MVP's, either to several players that are almost indistinguishable or a wide variety of games?

Postscript: Iverson probably should have gotten it. He led the league in scoring, became a deadly distributor, stole the ball like a maniac and had more heart than the rest of the league put together. If you're going to think sensibly about it like this, LeBron could have run away with the award if anyone on his team could capitalize on any of the open looks, spacing on floor, etc. he gets for them.