Wednesday, April 26, 2006

And your 2006 NBA MVP is... Steve Nash?

According to "reports" (I've never understood exactly what these reports were), Steve Nash is the NBA MVP for the second straight season.

If you have read my MVP rankings, you'll know that I had Nash at #5 behind LeBron, Kobe, Dirk, and Wade respectively. 17 out of 20 ESPN "experts" agree. That makes Nash 2 for 2 on undeserving NBA Awards.

Don't get me wrong, Nash had a very good year, he played better this year than last year, and he's the best PG in the NBA. But let's call a spade a spade, for all of his offensive skills, he's a bad defensive player and he gets outplayed far too often. If Nash is this valuable, why did his old team get better after he left?

I just can't see how Nash can deserve this over LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, or Dirk Nowitski. Dirk's team is better, LeBron's team is about as good only he doesn't have as good of a supporting cast, and while Kobe's team is a little worse, he doesn't have the supporting cast Nash does. Looking at the numbers, Nash isn't in these guys' leagues.

You're probably getting the impression that I don't like Nash, but that's not true at all. I love watching him play, and I love watching the Suns play. But Nash is not the MVP. It's hard to fathom how Nash can have 2 MVPs and John Stockton, who was far better, has none, which I know doesn't really have to do with this, but it's still kinda amusing. It's deja vu all over again in the MVP voting.

1 comment:

Pradamaster said...

I posted this on the wrong entry, so I'll post it again here. I've become dilusional from studying for finals.

I think Nash deserves the MVP last year because he played on the best team and there weren't too many other deserving candidates. But I totally agree that he didn't deserve it at all this season. There were so many deserving candidates this year. If Elton Brand had his breakout season last year, he would have won MVP. Is Nash really much better than John Stockton in his prime or Jason Kidd in 02-03? Nobody honestly suggests that Stockton should have won the MVP when he played in the Jordan-Barkley-Magic-Bird era. But that is what we're seeing here. LeBron, Kobe, Nowitzki, and Billups all deserved it over Nash. This is the most disappointing piece of news to come out today, and I am a fan of the Phoenix Suns.