This season’s Most Valuable Player award voting was among the most discussed professional basketball stories in recent memory that didn’t involve a fistfight or a drug charge.
That is to say, the face of the National Basketball Association is changing rapidly, and decisively for the better.
Old Steve Nash and his aching back (along with an even older Shaquille O’Neal) and the Phoenix Suns bowed out of the playoffs quickly, as have the “yesterday’s news” Dallas Mavericks.
And in one of the greatest surprises of the season, the Eastern Conference playoffs have been thoroughly entertaining, even downright compelling. Once again, young was threatening old in the Association, with the athleticism and exuberance of the Atlanta Hawks pushing the creaky old Boston Celtics to the brink of elimination before folding under pressure in the Boston Garden. That series was one of the best I’ve seen since Dikembe Mutombo’s Denver Nuggets upset Gary Payton’s Seattle Supersonics in the first round of the 1994 playoffs. That Denver-Seattle series would probably still rank as my favorite though, as it involved the smashed dreams of a Beaver.
Then there’s the San Antonio Spurs, the most annoyingly efficient team in basketball, who look like they might have their hands full with the up-and-coming New Orleans Hornets. Scratch that, the Spurs look out-gunned and old next to the Hornets, who are quickly becoming the heir apparent to the aging Suns as the most exciting team in basketball. Yes, the Hornets do employ Bonzi Wells, by many accounts one of the worst human beings in the league, but maybe that was just the influence of Rasheed Wallace on his fragile young mind.
I digress, because the best is yet to come, as a Boston-Detroit Eastern final and a Los Angeles-New Orleans Western final loom, with the possibility of a Celtics-Lakers finale. Any basketball fan, even a Bryant-hater, can get excited about the renewal of that rivalry.
But the series I will be looking forward to most has to be a Lakers-Hornets Western Conference Final. Sure, Kobe Bryant ended up winning the MVP award, a big monkey off his back, but national sentiment was split pretty evenly between Bryant and Hornets guard Chris Paul. Paul is among the most dynamic of the new crop of NBA talent and posted numbers for the ages this year at more than 21 points and 11 assists per game. Paul has somehow upped his game even more in the playoffs, averaging more than 24 points and 12 assists through the first seven games.
And it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I fall squarely into the Paul camp. I swore a blood oath to loathe Bryant with every fiber of my being when he single-handedly ripped the hearts out of the chests of Blazers fans everywhere in the fourth quarter of game seven of the 2001 Western Conference Finals. That fateful fourth quarter didn’t just result in the loss of a championship for Portland, but began a downward spiral for the franchise that only now seems to have been righted.
With the Blazers on the rise my loathing of Bryant has understandably mellowed to a pulsing glow, which stands ready to burst back to full flame at the slightest encouragement.
That being said, he probably deserved the award, though almost in spite of himself. Remember Kobe’s childish whining about his supporting cast before this season began? Remember the trade demands? I guess winning really does solve just about anything, as it has managed to even make someone of Bryant’s ilk look like a good guy and a team player.
But we know the truth, and hopefully a Paul-versus-Bryant showdown in the next round will go Paul’s way, bringing out the old Kobe and reminding everyone why, until this week, he had never been named MVP.
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