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this years MVP race is just insane
Why Kobe won't win the MVP
By Scoop Jackson
Page 2
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Updated: April 7, 2008, 3:38 PM ET
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Last week, my partner in crime wrote a column about how uncomfortable she will be when Kobe Bryant receives the 2008 MVP award. Well, no disrespect to Jemele (Ms. Hill to those of us who know her), but Kobe Bryant will not win the MVP this year. And if recent history proves consistent, he might finish behind Alonzo Mourning in the voting.
[+] EnlargeJed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
Kobe Bryant is to the MVP what Ralph Nader is to the presidency.
Truth is Kobe Bryant will never win the MVP of the league. He is hated too much. Hated by those who cast votes. Hated too much by those he plays against. And the two All-Star Game MVPs he's won, well, they don't count in this scenario. Voting Kobe as the best basketball player in the world for a day is one thing, honoring him with that same le for an entire season … in the infamous words of Bobby Brown's ex-wife: "Oh, to the No!"
Writers won't honor Kobe like that, not even when in good consciousness they want to or would like to. As one writer said to me when the subject was brought up in conversation, very apropos for an election year, "Kobe's electability quotient is zero." In other words, he's Ralph Nader.
How is hate justified? Easy, by being consistent. Which is why this year will be no different than the past two. Because if we are honest (and this goes to Jemele's point), if we look at what Kobe Bryant has done in the past two seasons without winning the MVP, there should be no way he can win it this year. Which leads us back to the hate: A man averages 35.4 ppg, the eighth-highest average in the history of the league; he gives you 5.3 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.8 steals; he has 27 games of 40-plus points, has one month where he averages 43.4 ppg, scores 81 in one game and outscores an entire team in another (the 62-point game against Dallas where he sat out the fourth quarter); he is on the all-defensive first team (something not one of the other players in the MVP running is included on); and he leads a CBA-built team to the playoffs. The man has a season that no one is likely to see for another generation and he comes in fourth in the MVP voting that year.
That same man, the very next year, averages 31.6 points, 5.7 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.4 steals for the "fedora trick"; he has 10 games of 50-plus points, only the second person in NBA history to do so in a single season (including a four-in-a-row stretch that hadn't been seen in more than 20 years); he makes the all-defensive first team again; and this time he takes a YBA-built squad to the playoffs. In a season that many claim is more "complete" than the season before, the man this time comes in third in the MVP voting.
How bad is it for Kobe? In a 2004-05 season in which Kobe averaged 27.6 points, 5.9 rebounds and 6.0 assists, P.J. Brown -- yes, you read right -- received more MVP votes than he did, and Brown received only one vote. How many games did the Hornets win that year? 18.
(And it's not just the sportswriters. In that never-to-be-seen-again 2005-06 season, the GMs around the league, who have their own MVP voting, had Bryant fifth on their ballots.)
And nothing is going to make this season any different.
[+] EnlargeAP Photo/Matt Sayles
Kobe Bryant finished behind P.J. Brown in the 2004-05 MVP voting. Yes, you read that correctly.
So yes, there is an "earned the right" clause that goes on in all MVP voting, just as there is that same "clause" that exists in all professions and walks of life. But it will not apply to Kobe Bryant. Not this year or any other year. He's not Denzel, and this isn't "Training Day." And although there are those who say that Kobe is in a different place now, that the world does not "resent" him the way that it did, that the Colorado incident is behind him and that the Kobe who wears No. 24 is different than the one who wore No. 8, their delusion will only make the situation worse. For it brings false hope. In sticking with the Academy Awards analogy: Kobe Bryant is Martin Scorsese … before "The Departed."
So the reality is this: As nice -- and I mean nice in a This-dude-is-on-some-beyond-Steve-Nash level -- as Chris Paul's game has been all season long (his full name during broadcasts and highlight shows has become "MVP candidate Chris Paul") his season can't compare to Kobe's past two. Yes, he's elevated his team to a height that no one expected, but can you name one player on the Lakers (not including Kobe) over the past three years who is as good or has played as well as David West has this season? , name one who has played as well as Peja Stojakovic or Tyson Chandler.
Plus how will the voters justify not giving CP3 the MVP in a season when his numbers are better than Nash's were the two seasons he got back-to-back MVPs? Paul's 21.5 points, 11.5 assists, 4.0 rebounds, 2.7 steals and 2.5 turnovers are better in totality than the 15.5, 11.5, 3.4, 1.0 and 3.3 Nash put up in 2004-05 and the 18.8, 10.5, 4.2, 0.8 and 3.5 he posted during the 2005-06 season. And CP's team is in position to do what Nash's team did when he came back to Phoenix: earn the top seed in the West. So if Nash won 62 games and the West in '05-06 with inferior numbers to Paul's, how does the league not give Paul the award if his team wins 60 and has the best record in the West?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...7&sportCat=nba
Nice column....sad but true.
And trust, CP3's electability is off the charts compared to Kobe's. His MVP approval rating is sic, while Kobe's is sick. So Chris, congrats, enjoy the Maurice Podoloff. The voters love you.
And that's not necessarily because of who CP (or KG if you want to toss him into this conversation) is as much as it is because of who Kobe is: the "8" they love to hate. Someone less understood than a villain, and someone for whom those who vote have less tolerance when it comes to separating what he does from who he is. It's the same reason why upon eligibility into the Hall of Fame, Roger Clemens will receive more first-ballot votes than Barry Bonds. It will have more to do with how much more Roger was/is/remains beloved than Barry by those who will have the power to vote them into immortality than it will race or the level of crime either one committed while playing.
Is it right? Fair? Impartial? No. It's life. And for Kobe, it's become his life.
In sports, in the end, whether we want to acknowledge it honestly or not, athletes put their legacies in the hands of those who have the power to hate them. And in those situations, what they do on the court or field, whether we are talking MVP or Hall of Fame (or Oscars), what they do takes a backseat to who they are. Their careers become a popularity contest, a "likability" raffle lying in wait for the hate to die. Which it never really does. And in the past five years in professional sports, no athlete (with the exception of maybe Bonds or T.O.) has been more hated and hated on than Kobe Bryant.
Don't believe me? Watch what happens when he doesn't win the MVP … again.
this years MVP race is just insane
Kobe aint gonna win it. Too much hate.
Scoop plagiarized:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bp8ns7Bkm-s
Did Scoop pull the race card? That's the only move I've seen him make, so I quit reading him altogether.
Yeah, the race is crazy indeed.
Also, the lakers are the only team that has 4 players in the top 26 in effeciency this year as per NBA.com
Kobe
Pau
Lamar
Bynum
Only Denver has 3 players as the next highest.
Scoop trying to use his Jedi mind tricks to reverse psychologize voters. It's a bit too transparent though.
If Kobe really outplays Chris Paul this Friday, he will definitely get his share of votes. I wouldn't be surprised if Kobe decides to take on Chris Paul at the defensive end.
I didn't surmise that Mono....who knows.
Scoop & Jemele Hill are the two worst sports writers I've ever read. No wonder he gives her a shout out at the start of his ty column.
2 paragraphs in and there's a Bobby Brown reference. I've quit reading.
I know I shouldn't say this, but I will anyways. If I had the opportunity, I would LOVE to just slap the out of Jemele Hill for a good 5 minutes. And if there was only some way to make Scoop's disgustingly overinflated ego and his superstar ass-kissing self realize that Jason Whitlock is 10000000000000x better than him.
What does 1 game mean really. The hornets beat the lakers last game when Pau went down in the first q and the game before the lakers killed them by 29. The game they won was where Peja hit 10 3's and went for a season high. It shouldn't come down to 1 game.
Kobe deserves MVP this year regardless of what Paul is doing. If Paul wins it, I won't complain because he deserves it too, but I have no problem whatsoever giving Kobe a "sorry we didn't give this to you last year & the year before" MVP.
Jerry West and Baylor never won it either.......
Agreed. They're both horrible. Jemele Hill was horrible when she wrote for the Detroit Free Press. I wondered how the she got a gig in Bristol.
In reality, not much. But, games later in the season, especially between two top teams with two MVP candidates, may have some significance to some voters, whether really valid or not.
I agree with Jamstone and take it one step further. The MVP is CP3's right now for him to lose.
The Lakers/Hornets game on Friday will determine the MVP because it is very likely this game also determines the #1 seed in the West.
Like I said before, if CP3 keeps the #1 seed in the West, he'll win MVP. If Kobe takes back the #1 seed on Friday, that will guarantee Kobe's MVP.
The despise that Hill and Scoop have for white players like Nash and Dirk is silly. It should be enough to fire them. Yet it's cool to do that if you cover the NBA.
How Hill can say that Dirk shamelessly took the MVP from Kobe in 07 is beyond logical. The only other player that had any argument last year was Nash. At least Whitlock admitted that.
Yeah that part was extremely irritating. How can you say Dirk shamelessly took the MVP? He was the best player on the best regular season team. He never asked for that kind of honor. Now, Mark Cuban certainly DID shamelessly promote Dirk. But Dirk had nothing to do with that.
Was he supposed to refuse to accept the trophy after what happened in the playoffs? That would have created even more controversy than just taking it.
To call Dirk's accepting of last year's MVP "shameless" ought to be a fireable offense.
Well it's not that part that irritates me. No one will ever give back a trophy. I don't think she was refeering to that.
She is saying that somehow Kobe deserved the MVP last year, when I am pretty sure I went the whole season hearing only two names: Dirk and Nash. Where did she find that Kobe was a candidate last year?
I think she also wrote a story last year saying that she thought Dirk wasn't that much better than Nash, but that's it. This is revisionist history at it's best.
come on! be a little more positive... Kobe will get it... i want him to...
I just don't like her use of the word shameless. She could say Kobe deserved it over Dirk, which is certainly a valid opinion. But calling Dirk's MVP "shameless" implies some sort of responsibility resting on Dirk. There was nothing "shameless" in what Dirk did to win the MVP, or in him accepting that award. She made implications that somehow Dirk was trying to take something that he didn't deserve, rather than just playing his game and being given that award.
What's shameless isn't dirk accepting it's shameless that he was voted over Kobe. That's my opinion. The Lakers were decimated by injuries last year and Kobe carried them on his back and putting ungodly stats to boot.
It's funny NO is 1.5 games up on the Lakers and they are crowning Paul the MVP while Kobe's team has had Bynum miss 40+ games (First place in the league when he went down) and Pau missing 9 games that really sunk it for them in the standings. Paul's team has been relatively healthy all season, of course they have the best record. They are using the best player on the best team argument and forget to mention what Kobe and the Lakers have had to deal with. Too Funny.....
don't forget lakers team as a whole is a much better unit than hornets complete team. Hornets bench f'n sucks. THis helps in the long run of the season when you have Fish, Sasha, and Farmar having fresh legs playing out there most of the time.
htf can you say someone deserves to win one cause they are due for one?
dont you have to go out and earn it?
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