CROWNING THE KING OF THE COURT

SULLIVAN: I will tell you who should be the MVP, but he won't win it due to the NBA's dysfunctional front office. It has got to do with race, and that is one topic that scares the living daylights out of the NBA suits.

Dirk Nowitzki deserves the NBA MVP title this year. We are talking the regular season here, not the playoffs-for that there's a separate MVP. The 7-foot-tall German import may have had his finest season in a stellar career. He pimped up his game this year like a VW engineer. Without him, the Dallas Mavericks would not be in the playoffs. Hell, without him the Mavs would have been lucky to win 30 games. Without him, Dallas owner Mark Cuban would have had to go back to the Web to earn his money. Nowitzki did it all this year, and he did it with excellence, humility and teamwork-the hallmark of an MVP. He scored an average of 26.6, pulled down nine rebounds, and dished off almost three assists per game. For a 7-footer he runs the floor like a swingman, and he plays hard every night. Dirk never phones it in.

Just as good an argument could be made for Kobe Bryant of the Lakers and LeBron James of the Cavs. But Kobe is a one-man show. I'm still waiting for his hip-hop CD to drop; you know he has one in him. The problem with Kobe Bryant is that there are millions of streets named after him-One Way. If he weren't on the Lakers, I would bet good money that the rest of that team-which plays second fiddle to this pampered star-would have stepped up and made a playoff run with Phil Jackson's help. Kobe is despised by the most of the media. I don't like him because he doesn't play team ball.

LeBron James could easily be MVP as well. Without him the Cavs don't make the playoffs. But he's young and has a lot of MVP's coming his way. Let's give the veteran, Nowitzki, his day in the sun. He deserves it. But he won't get it. Why? It's because he is a white basketball player.

There is no way David Stern and his posse of politically correct sartorial police will allow back-to-back white players (Steve Nash of the Suns won last year) to win the NBA's MVP award. They kowtow to the spoiled babies that ruined this game, and to Stern and his coterie it would look "unseemly" to have a white guy win twice in a row. Doubt me? Let's see who wins this thing.

HOLLANDER: You're right. Dirk Nowitzki won't be MVP. He doesn't deserve to be. The NBA's MVP once again is Steve Nash. But before I tell you why, let me tell you about the problem with David Stern. It's not about race for Stern. It's about money, coupled with a dangerous lack of knowledge about the game of basketball. Stern kowtows to nobody. His arrogance is only exceeded by his avarice. The man has been dragging the NBA backward for 20 years, savagely marketing individual play over team play. Stern maximized merchandising by appealing to the buying power of the hip-hop demographic. The NBA made a lot of money that way. There's no crime in that. That marketing plan, however, was based on a flawless template: Michael Jordan. But the major flaw in that formula is that a special individual like Jordan comes along once every 50 or 100 years.

Basketball, like no other sport, is about the team. Individual sacrifice in the service of team glory is what must be exalted (or "marketed"), not individual glory and team neglect. Stern's misguided marketing emphasis created a league that played bad basketball and conditioned fans to think it was good. Things have gotten so out of whack that so-called "basketball fans" consider the NBA's two dominant teams, San Antonio and Detroit, boring. Stern's marketing juggernaut told a generation of fans that winning basketball is boring but as long as you see a lot of dunks and one guy scores a lot of points, losing basketball is fun. And the dopey fans bought in, until recently.

Humiliating international defeats (see the Athens 2004 Olympics) combined with mounting complaints of "unwatchability" exposed the NBA as an emperor with no clothes. Who took the basketball out of the NBA? Corporate sponsors wanted out. Stern nearly ruined the basic game on which the league was built.

So Stern, who knows zero about the game, instituted a cosmetic measure-a dress code which some felt disproportionately affected black players who favor hip-hop apparel. Stern certainly didn't kowtow to any political correctness with that move. If anything, he's running from Kobe and some of the other monsters he created. Plus, he babbles endlessly about how he's taking the NBA international. So how do you figure Nowitzki's race or nationality doesn't work for Stern? It works a bit too perfectly, I'd say.

SULLIVAN: I like your pick of Steve Nash, but sorry, Dave, he's not even in the MVP conversation this year. But he should be. The NBA wants a new face, and Nash won't win it simply because of Stern's evil corporate plan. They want to keep the "product" fresh. The NBA is in trouble. It has almost become completely unwatchable. Outside of the Pistons, Suns, Nets, Spurs and sometimes the Clippers, the league flat-out sucks. Nowitzki deserves the MVP. But I don't think he serves Stern's agenda. Maybe I'm wrong there, but a lot of times it all comes down to race; only no one will admit it. I've covered plenty of NBA locker rooms this year and quite a few black players were saying-off the record-that Nash won the MVP because he was white and the NBA needs white fans to pay the $100-plus tickets and huge cable bills. Nash won because he was the damn MVP. He improved the Suns by almost 40 wins. Stern wants to keep the labor market happy. He has a quota system and the MVP will not be Nash or Dirk. Count on it.

HOLLANDER: I am impressed with your jock-sniffing sports journalism, but all conspiracy theories aside, Nash deserves the MVP. Nash could join any current NBA team, substitute for their best player and make them a playoff team. Nowitzki, Kobe, LeBron or Dwyane couldn't do that with Nash's team in Phoenix. Nash lost his best player, Amare Stoudamire, but managed to win his division and make stars out of Boris Diaw, Raja Bell and Eddie House in the process. That's incredible. Without Nash (or with a different all-star), these guys are nobody (ask Quentin Richardson) and that team is nowhere. Nash not only performs brilliantly, he lifts the entire team on his back. While Nowitzki had a typically fine season, he did it with Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard and Jason Terry. More appropriately, rookie coach Avery Johnson won Coach of Year for getting Dallas to do something they have not done in a decade: play defense. Also consider that Phoenix beat Dallas two out of three games this year, the loss coming on the first game of the season.

The NBA MVP is like the heavyweight championship. You've got to knock out the champ. Nobody has clearly knocked Nash off that perch. The whole MVP concept is anathema to basketball. The Spurs and Pistons will battle again in the finals. They are perfect examples of team basketball. Idiots will call them boring. But Stern and his unctuous marketing arm, NBA Entertainment, should unveil a new marketing campaign during the finals: "The NBA. No MVPs." Then I'd really love this game.