Nash wins MVP...

Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash will be awarded the NBA's Most Valuable Player on Sunday.

<!--------------------------START PLAYER CARD------------------><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0 vspace="5" hspace="5"><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=8>[size=-2][/size]</TD><TD width=200 bgColor=#ecece4><!---------------------HEADSHOT TABLE STARTS HERE---------------------><TABLE cellSpacing=6 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD colSpan=2>[size=-1]Steve Nash[/size]
[size=-2]Point Guard
Phoenix Suns[/size]</TD><TD width=65 rowSpan=2> </TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD width=67>[size=-2]Profile
[/size]</TD><TD width=68></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------HEADSHOT TABLE ENDS HERE---------------------></TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD width=8>[size=-2][/size]</TD><TD width=200 bgColor=#ecece4><TABLE cellSpacing=4 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=0 width=190 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top align=middle bgColor=#ae5a00><TD colSpan=6><CENTER>2004-2005 SEASON STATISTICS</CENTER></TD></TR><TR align=right bgColor=#bcbcb4><TD width="17%">[size=-2]GM[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]PPG[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]RPG[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]APG[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]FG%[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]FT%[/size]</TD></TR><TR align=right bgColor=#bcbcb4><TD>[size=-2]75[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2]15.5[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2]3.3[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2]11.5[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2].502[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2].887[/size]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE MINI-PLAYER CARD ENDS HERE--------------------->

Nash has edged Miami center Shaquille O'Neal to become just the third point guard in 40-plus years to win the league's highest individual honor, according to sources familiar with the results. The others are Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson.

The official announcement will come at halftime of ABC's 3 p.m. ET playoff game.

O'Neal, three times an NBA Finals MVP, has won the regular-season MVP trophy just once in his 13 seasons. Apparently tipping this vote in Nash's favor was the Suns' 33-game improvement -- from 29 wins to a league-leading 62 wins -- after signing Nash away from the Dallas Mavericks in the offseason.

<!--------------------------START PLAYER CARD------------------><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0 vspace="5" hspace="5"><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=8>[size=-2][/size]</TD><TD width=200 bgColor=#ecece4><!---------------------HEADSHOT TABLE STARTS HERE---------------------><TABLE cellSpacing=6 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD colSpan=2>[size=-1]Shaquille O'Neal[/size]
[size=-2]Center
Miami Heat[/size]</TD><TD width=65 rowSpan=2> </TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD width=67>[size=-2]Profile
[/size]</TD><TD width=68></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------HEADSHOT TABLE ENDS HERE---------------------></TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD width=8>[size=-2][/size]</TD><TD width=200 bgColor=#ecece4><TABLE cellSpacing=4 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=0 width=190 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top align=middle bgColor=#ae5a00><TD colSpan=6><CENTER>2004-2005 SEASON STATISTICS</CENTER></TD></TR><TR align=right bgColor=#bcbcb4><TD width="17%">[size=-2]GM[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]PPG[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]RPG[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]APG[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]FG%[/size]</TD><TD width="17%">[size=-2]FT%[/size]</TD></TR><TR align=right bgColor=#bcbcb4><TD>[size=-2]73[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2]22.9[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2]10.4[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2]2.7[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2].601[/size]</TD><TD>[size=-2].461[/size]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!---------------------INLINE MINI-PLAYER CARD ENDS HERE--------------------->

Nash's previous best MVP showing was 14th place in 2002.

With Nash flanked by the athletic finishing of fellow All-Stars Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion, Phoenix became just the second team in NBA annals to win at least 60 games after a 50-loss season. The first? The Boston Celtics in Larry Bird's rookie season of 1979-80.

But Nash is defying history to beat out O'Neal, and not simply because he had only one scholarship offer from a Division I university -- Santa Clara -- as a slight Canadian teen-ager in British Columbia.

Allen Iverson, the NBA's 2001 MVP as a shooting guard, is the only player shorter than 6-foot-6 in the past four decades to win the award. Nash also becomes the first MVP since Portland's Bill Walton in 1978 to average less than 20 points per game. His 15.5-point scoring average for the Suns is the third-lowest all-time for an MVP, ahead of only Washington's Wes Unseld (13.8 ppg in 1969) and Boston's Bill Russell (14.1 ppg in 1965).

Nash, though, did lead the league in assists (11.5 apg) by a wide margin for a Suns team that averaged a league-leading 110 points per game.

Phoenix swept Memphis 4-0 in a first-round series and awaits the Dallas-Houston winner in the second round, raising the possibility of an emotional series against the team he left last summer.

They couldn't have given it to a deserving guy. Best part about Nash is his class. He isn't out bashing refs and former ownership like Shaq enjoys doing. He is an asset to the community he plays in and basketball as a whole.

That is outfukinstanding. Well deserved. arty:

stomie said:

Click to expand...

I still can't get over that pic stomie. It's a classic!
Man are they wasted or what?! lol


I had mixed feelings about who should win it. Although most of the season I felt it should easily go to Nash, I started to change my opinion lately.

Would of probably been proper to make them co MVP's.........

Alright! Just heard it on the radio...congrats Nash I know you're an Rx reader...

I won't give away Nash's handle.

Glad to see the most deserving guy finally win it....He has turned this team into a major force in just one year...

arty: arty:

Congrats Steve!

-F-

Cmon Steve!!

I have your team at 33-1 to win the title.....

As Billy Murray told his bowling ball when facing Woody Harrelson towards the end.............. "I need you now, more than ever"...........

The monkey's at ESPN are not too happy. They are all saying their boy Shaq should of got it. The "Shootaround" show is unwatchable.

Nice to see a guy win it thats not ripping his jersey off at the end of games. When are these overpaid primadonnas going to stop doing that. I'm tired of that act.

Nice to see a class act like Nash win it, he deserved it taking this team to another level, great pic Stomie

sharky99 said:

Click to expand...

He truly was the MVP. The Suns were terrible without him, and when the Heat did'nt have Shaq they still looked competitive to a degree.

I'm happy for Nash. Who says white boys can't play?!

Of course, a different view based on race:




<TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=15 rowSpan=2></TD><TD class=v1>Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2005</TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=2><TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=250 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=adlabel align=left><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1>_krdDartInc++;document.write('<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.1" SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/miamiherald.sports/dan_le_batard;kw=center6;c2=columnists;c3=dan_le_batard;c4=dan_le_batard_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile='+_krdDartInc+';ord='+_krdDartOrd+'?"><\/SCRIPT>');</SCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/miamiherald.sports/dan_le_batard;kw=center6;c2=columnists;c3=dan_le_batard;c4=dan_le_batard_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile=3;ord=1115673279593?"></SCRIPT><CENTER><SCRIPT language=JavaScript src="http://servedby.advertising.com/site=699341/size=300250/bnum=94090792/optn=1"></SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT> </NOSCRIPT></CENTER><OBJECT codeBase=http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0 height=250 width=300 classid=clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000>







































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IN MY OPINION

Unprecedented choice for MVP begs question


[size=-1]DAN LE BATARD[/size]

[size=-1]dlebatard@herald.com[/size]

<!-- begin body-content -->How much of this has to do with race?

A lot?

A little?

Or ''zero,'' as Miami Heat president Pat Riley said before the little white guy beat the big black guy for MVP?

I don't pretend to know these answers. There is no good way to do these measurements with science or math. And I, too, am tired of seeing racism thrown like a Molotov cocktail into discussions where racism doesn't exist.

But don't you have to ask these questions when confronted with something unprecedented?

Or do we just continue laughing and making noise at our playoff cocktail party while ignoring the pinkish elephant standing in the middle of the room in a Nash jersey?

No one who looks or plays like Steve Nash has ever been basketball's MVP. Ever. In the history of the award, a tiny, one-dimensional point guard who plays no defense and averages fewer than 16 points a game never has won it. But Nash just stole Shaquille O'Neal's trophy, even though O'Neal had much better numbers than Nash in just about every individual statistical measurement except assists, so it begs the question:

Is this as black and white as the boxscores that usually decide these things?

Nobody is suggesting voters made their selection while wearing Klan hoods. Today's racism rarely is that overt. It tends to be hidden better than that, as it is with the NBA's proposed age restriction, a rule that would ostensibly affect all creeds and colors but really affects only one.

Does that mean commissioner David Stern is racist? Of course not. But, in that age restriction, he is proposing something that basically affects only black people until the age of 20.

And you can see why blacks might see the prejudice in that, just like Jews might object if there was suddenly a $2,000 tax placed on all flights to Israel.

The rule might apply to everyone flying to Israel, but one group is more likely to see and feel the anti-Semitism in it more than others.

Does it mean that a prejudice exists? Maybe. Maybe not. There are usually other valid explanations, too. But if only one group feels it, it might as well exist. And that's where this MVP discussion gets tricky:

Voters might have simply chosen Nash because he was different and the underdog. And being white is part of what made him those things.

DIFFERENT CHOICE

The book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, explores how these measurements aren't made by a conscious part of our brain. Very few people would admit to themselves or others that, yes, as the puppets sing happily in the Broadway show Avenue Q, ''everyone's a little bit racist.'' We don't like what it says about us, or makes us feel. But Blink gives example after scientific example of, say, car dealers in Chicago giving a worse deal to black buyers even though A) white men and women were sent in to the same dealers dressed the same way and giving the same background information and, B) every car dealer in Chicago probably isn't racist.

The car salesmen weren't doing this with a conscious part of their brain any more than the MVP voters might have been. But if you need a tiebreaker (and Shaq and Nash could have certainly been co-MVPs), ''different'' and ''underdog'' might work for you as a rationalization better than, ``I'll take the white guy.''

Who is to say that, given the same stats as Nash, 5-5 Earl Boykins, who is black, may not have gotten the MVP vote, too, because he is so tiny? Or that being white helped Nash no more than being Canadian? But, again, there is no precedent, none, for any of the black guys who have put up Nash's numbers during the years -- and there have been plenty -- winning the MVP.

PLENTY TO ARGUE

There are reasonable arguments to be made on Nash's behalf beyond race. His team jumped from 29 victories to a league-leading 62. Phoenix started 31-4 and, when Nash missed the next five games, it was not only 31-9 but lost. And, for all Miami's winning, this has been the worst statistical year of an O'Neal career that has won him only one MVP.

The argument Stan Van Gundy makes on behalf of O'Neal -- that Dallas improved in Nash's absence and the Lakers collapsed without Shaq -- is a flawed one. We are arguing about value this season, about the value of Shaq and Nash to these teams. And Miami played respectably enough without Shaq while Phoenix, in a smaller sample size, crumbled without Nash. Nash's team won three more games than Shaq's and, if you must use last season, Nash's present franchise improved more from one season to the next than Shaq's did.

I would have voted for Shaq, but I understand the argument of those who didn't.

A vote for Nash is a vote for the little guy, the underdog, the point guard, the assist, unselfishness and Phoenix's breathtaking style of play.

And, by coincidence or not, the white guy, too.

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Nash RULES! :toast:

Let's see how he performs in light of the trophy.