If you're an NBA fanatic, you're ecstatic that March is over - for that level of the game, that month isn't Madness, it's maddening - and that April is finally here. That the madness that lasts two months, not just one, is about to begin: the playoffs, when the truly best basketball on Earth is played.
There's one significant problem with April and the NBA, though - two, if you count the fact that the first round tends to run right into May. The big problem is that the Most Valuable Player votes are due today, the day after the regular season ends.
Every other pro sports league awards its version of the MVP based on regular-season performance, just like the NBA. It's hard to work up an argument to do it any other way; the postseason has its own individual awards. Yet in no other league is the true most valuable player, lowercase, determined in the postseason the way it is in the NBA.
If you haven't done it under the brightest and hottest of lights, the belief generally has been, your MVP credentials might be in serious question.
Ask Karl Malone, who is in the record books as a two-time Most Valuable Player but whose 1997 trophy, at least, pales in memory to the fact that he contributed mightily to the Jazz's two NBA Finals losses - to the Bulls and Michael Jordan, who probably should be a six-time regular-season MVP instead of five.
Or David Robinson, who won in 1995 and actually received the trophy in the middle of a conference finals series in which he was schooled embarrassingly by the incumbent MVP and soon to be repeat champion, Hakeem Olajuwon.
Or Charles Barkley in 1993. Or Allen Iverson in 2001. Or Kevin Garnett two years ago, or Steve Nash one year ago ...
Five of the aforementioned players, by the way - all except Robinson and Olajuwon - are the only ones in the 50-year history of the MVP award who did not win a championship during their careers. Don't even look to see if any other big sport can match that. Barry Bonds has seven MVPs, for goodness' sake, and his one and only trip to the World Series is as tainted as everything he's done since BALCO entered his realm.
Which brings us to this season's MVP race, which is as deep, close and open to debate as any ever has been. At the same time, though, it likely will continue this very recent trend: The winner will watch another team celebrate a championship, this year and possibly for the rest of his career.
