Wednesday, May 11, 2005

NBA MVP BFD

I was listening to Larry Elder while driving home yesterday and had to listen to Larry chastise certain members of the media who thought that the choice of Steve Nash, of the Phoenix Suns, for MVP over Shaq was only because Nash is smaller, or because he's white.
Come... ON!
Where are people's brains when they think up things like this? If there is one place that race typically is not a factor it's deciding who's the better athlete, or player, in a major American sport.
Bomani Jones of ESPN, although he voted for Shaq, thinks the diatribe about Nash winning because he's white is full of it.

So, what if Steve Nash were black? That follicular disaster atop his head would have been braided or faded by now. He might have dated a member of Destiny's Child instead of a Spice Girl.
And he still would have won the MVP.

Jones goes on to say that point guards are commonly left out of MVP discussions, as well as white players. If white guys typically get favored in these ballots, why didn't Stockton get any in his much storied career? In fact there hasn't been a white MVP since Larry Bird got one in 1986.
Should Shaq have won the trophy instead? There obviously are many people who think so, as the voting was close. However you won't often see me trumpeting the Diesel as the best in the league. If I was 7'1" and 325 lbs and had a modicum of talent, my stock would rise too.
The problem is that Shaq was out for a few games, as was Nash, but without Nash, the Suns were 2-5. With him they were 60-15. The Suns are a bottom dwelling team without Nash, but the Heat, while they wouldn't have made it far in the playoffs, would have done all right. The Suns won 33 more games this season than they did last season because Nash is there.
The MVP is supposed to be a measure of how important a player is to his team, and one thing is for sure, Nash makes everyone better on that team, and they would not have the best record in the NBA, let alone in the playoffs, without him.

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