<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> The Mavericks reach the season's halfway mark tonight. That can only mean Dirk Nowitzki is halfway to his first and the franchise's first MVP award. It can only mean that, of course, if all the voters think like me, but why shouldn't that be the case? Nowitzki has developed into the all-around player who most critics thought as recently as the 2005 playoffs he would never become. Even coach Avery Johnson was hard-pressed recently to find an area in which Nowitzki needed to make significant improvement. He's the best player on the best team in the NBA. Some voters, taking a flawed viewpoint of what makes an MVP, will vote for him simply on that basis. It's why Detroit point guard Chauncey Billups, nowhere near a true MVP really, was in the discussion for much of last season when the Pistons owned the league's best record. Being the best on the best is only a start for Nowitzki. In the league's efficiency ratings, he is second only to Minnesota's Kevin Garnett, who has managed to make a career of being great in this category without leading his team to anything. Efficiency rating doesn't measure which player takes over games in the fourth quarter and which one shrinks. Nowitzki had a long stretch of games in which he failed to score 30 points this season. That's when Josh Howard was proving himself worthy of All-Star status. But recently, the team has needed Dirk to win games. At Indiana, he had 17 of his 43 points in the fourth quarter and overtime. At Toronto, he had 12 of his 38 in the fourth quarter. </div> Source
Hahah, I thought this was an ESPN columnist or something, turns out its Tim Cowlishaw, the biggest homer ever. The whole MVP talk is rather annoying to be honest, it's worse than the Heisman (at least in college football, a single game can make or break your chances, not so in the NBA). I just stated a few days ago in the Suns board that I think at this point in the season Dirk would win the MVP, but this is like the 15th article/segment about this year's NBA MVP I've read/seen today and most teams haven't even played 41 of their 82 games yet. Maybe everybody should wait until, I dunno, MARCH! Gilbert Arenas said it best the other day after he scored 51 and the crowd was chanting "MVP" (something fans used to do near the end of the season is now becoming the norm in the first 20 games of the season) and said "MVP? That trophy is given out at the end of the year". I like that attitude and think the media should just wait until it matters, I'm already burned out of all the MVP talk.
