Campaign Kobe

4/28/07

As the MVP chants for Kobe Bryant resonated throughout Staples Center in Los Angeles late Thursday night into early Friday morning(the game concluded at around 1:20 AM), this question popped into my head. “Why does Kobe Bryant, “the heir to Jordan’s throne” not have a regular season MVP trophy in his possession yet?” How the NBA’s most clutch shooter, and prolific scorer with 3 championship rings, 9 All-Star Games, and 8 All-NBA selections, and 6 All-Defensive team selections under his belt got overlooked time and time again is absolutely mind-boggling. To quell my minds quandaries, I decided to research his 10 previous seasons and concluded that Kobe has already played three previous MVP caliber seasons thus far in his career

His first Award should have been shelled out for the 02-03 season. With Shaq missing a large portion of the year due to injury, Kobe was able to stabilize the team for a majority of the regular season while every team took their best shot at the three-time defending champs. In the process, Bryant embarked on a torrid streak of 9 consecutive games of 40 points or more en route to averaging a then career high of 30 ppg, 6.9 rpg as well as 5.9 apg.

At the dawn of the following season, Bryant was still recuperating from a tumultuous year which witnessed the end of the Lakers quest for a 4-peat at the hands of their arch-nemesis San Antonio Spurs as well as the tarnishing of his squeaky clean reputation. In a season of change, a visibly out of shape Kobe was able adjust his game to accommodate the egos of two future Hall-of-Famers in the midst of averaging 24.0 ppg, 5.1 apg and 5.5 rpg en route to his fourth NBA Finals.

. Who can forget his buzzer beating jumper on the Nuggets home court after spending the entire afternoon in an Eagle County courtroom? And how crucial were his two breathtaking last second three-pointers at the end of regulation then overtime in the season finale to clinch the number two seed in the Western Conference? Though the eventual winner, Kevin Garnett had an excellent year the reasoning was credible. How would the public have responded to the potential crowning of an alleged rapist and at the very least, a self proclaimed adulterer as the face of the regular season NBA MVP?

In the most statistically productive season of his career, Kobe’s 35.4 points per game in 2006 would become the highest ever for a player not to win the MVP award,

despite propelling his overachieving Lakers to a near playoff upset of the #2 seed, Phoenix Suns. His masterful 81 point performance in Toronto actually overshadowed the best game he played all season—a 65 point three quarter effort by Bryant versus the eventual Western Conference champion, Dallas Mavericks.

While Nowitzki has been billed as this season’s front-runner, he’s failed to consistently exhibit his clutch leadership as he’s disappeared down crucial stretches for his team. Now, a Game 4 loss would put Dirk Nowitzki in the similar unsavory predicament his dear friend Steve Nash faced against Kobe’s Lakers year ago: Dirk's powerhouse team trailing 3-1 in the first round and facing the prospect of trying to explain an early playoff exit at your MVP press conference. In the meantime, Mr. Bryant has willed his young and inexperienced Lakers roster into a competitive 1^st round series against the NBA’s winningest franchise over the past three seasons. After, two crushing and humiliating defeats at the hands of Nash’s Suns, Phil Jackson was prompted to declare the team’s strategy would resort back to The Kobe Show.

"I might just have to run him 48 minutes [in Game 3]," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. "He might just have to find his spots [to rest] on the floor rather than taking him off the court." The result of Coach Jackson’s impeccable faith was a 45 minute, 43 point victorious performance by Bryant.

So the NBA’s $128 million dollar question has to be: how exactly do you define valuable?

For those Nash supporters who espouse his willingness to play the team game over Kobe, it’s a lot easier to do successfully when you’ve got one of the best assembled teams in NBA history. For those who cite Nowitzki’s unrivaled versatility, the Golden State Warriors have exposed his kryptonite to quicker more athletic forwards while Kobe regularly dominates against five different defenders nightly.

For all of Steve Nash’s offensive brilliance, both he and Nowitzki are perennial members of the NBA All-Invisible Defensive team as they often vanish on the defensive side of the floor as opposed to Kobe Bryant’s defensive prowess which is often ignored despite his three selections to the NBA’s All-Defensive 1^st Team. As Nash’s Suns and Dirk’s Mavs have been drawn into an all-out arms race to stockpile All-Star talent, Kobe Bryant goes to battle most nights with the NBA’s equivalent to the Confederate Army at Hiroshima.

Though NBA cognoscenti have argued that the Suns and Mavs 60+ wins qualify their two superstars for serious MVP consideration shouldn’t Kobe’s role in the Laker’s rescue mission (see illustration on next page) qualify him as the front runner? There has been a precedent set before for a player whose team misses or barely makes the playoffs to win the MVP. In fact, the lowest winning percentage for an NBA Most Valuable Player was handed out in the inaugural season of the award to the incomparable Bob Petit of the 33-39 St. Louis Hawks. Then, in an eerily familiar scenario 30 years ago, Lakers center Kareem Abdul Jabbar, attained his fifth Most Valuable Player award after leading the Lakers to a mediocre 38-44 regular season record.

Dirk isn’t even the emotional leader for his team and though impressive, the Suns frenetic, up tempo pace and all-star supporting cast help pad Nash’s gaudy statistics. It’s like giving George Clooney more credit for the success of Oceans 11 while acknowledging Denzel Washington played a minimal role in the success of Training Day. The reality is this: Sure Oceans 11 was a bona fide blockbuster with an A-list ensemble cast but Denzel prevented a movie with a mediocre plot from becoming a box office flop and for this pivotal role he was awarded the distinguished Best Actor Award.

While most fans no doubt gazed in awe as Kobe tore through the NBA last month with four consecutive games of 50 points or more, his highest points per game average for a month this season was actually his 43 ppg in January. Yet, the public outcry for Kobe’s deserved MVP candidacy is virtually non-existent.

As irritated as I am, I’m not surprised by this recurring theme for Black Mamba. Since the nascent years of the Bryant-era the hate has always been there. He was hated by teammates because of the arrogant hubris and the loner attitude he exuded as a talented 18 year old teenager. Hated by black fans because of his lack of street cred as a result of his privileged childhood in Italy and labeled an untouchable for endorsements following his alleged rape of a white woman at a Colorado resort in 2003. Even booed by his hometown fans following his masterful MVP performance at the 2002 All-Star Game and portrayed as a recidivist by the league’s front office in the form of suspensions for minor inadvertent elbows in the last three months.

This season, however, Kobe Bryant has been on a mission and has played like a man amongst boys. As Bryant skillfully wriggles through the lane, effortlessly glides through the air, and leads his again overachieving Lakers roster with great aplomb, its easy to take for granted the immense talent which he possesses. He’s the facilitator, the finisher and the enforcer.

In a lackluster season which produced a vapid MVP race that has been handicapped in the media to the jittery, wiry point god Steve Nash and his former comrade, the sweet shooting, yet stiff, Dirk Nowitzki the sad realization I’ve been forced to come accept is that somewhere along the line, the MVP trophy lost its true purpose. In the midst of an injury plagued season chocked full of uninspired basketball by his fellow superstars, one player emerged leaps and bounds above all others as the true Heir to the Throne. Its too bad no one else sees it. As the NBA writers voters send in their MVP ballots hopefully they’ll finally open their eyes and vote “Kobe in ‘07.”

--D.J. Dunson