The selection of Dirk Nowitzki as the NBA's Most Valuable Player is not official, announced or even confirmed.
What is confirmed, though, is that if the honor goes to him, a heavy dose of dishonor will come with it.
It's not his fault. Seriously. The stipulations for the NBA MVP voting are the same as they were when the first was awarded in 1956. It's a regular-season award. Nowitzki had a worthy regular season.
However, this is the only league that could justify awarding this prize after the playoffs are done. Nowitzki, sitting at home in shame, is the main reason for that, but not the only recent one. The NBA MVP has to make his mark in the postseason. Preferably by winning a championship.
The predecessors of his likely honor have rarely, if ever, laid a stink bomb of the magnitude of Nowitzki's in the Dallas Mavericks' just-concluded debacle against the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs.
By the numbers, it's the biggest upset in league postseason history. By the numbers, Nowitzki led the way, particularly with that sixth and final game, in which he would have contributed more had he curled up in the fetal position under the scorers' table and stayed out of everybody's way.
Blame him for that taint on his reputation. But the taint he'll likely leave on the reputation of the award itself -- don't blame him for that.
It's simply established precedent. NBA MVPs are iconic figures, and they become those figures largely by being winners. Their legends are set in stone during the playoffs and garnished with championship rings. Theoretically, a player can collect a garage-full of regular-season awards, and if he doesn't back it up with at least an unforgettable moment in a heart-wrenching defeat to another MVP-led team, he really doesn't belong in that exclusive club.
But that's just theoretical. Historically, players like that don't even get a sniff of the award, and if they get it once, they have a hard time getting it again, and their failures are only magnified for eternity.
Just ask Karl Malone. If you can, ask him before shooting free throws, the way the Chicago Bulls' Scottie Pippen did in Game 1 of the 1997 Finals, the year Malone won the first of his two MVPs and lost the first of his two championship series as a member of the Utah Jazz. (Pippen infamously told him, "The Mailman doesn't deliver on Sundays." Malone then proved that he had, in fact, shown up without his bag.)
