King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Steve Nash for MVP! Of the playoffs. Plus: Inside the mind of a champion with Bill Walton.
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May 23, 2005 | The slam-dunk choice for Most Valuable Player has to be Steve Nash.
I'm talking about the playoffs. What did you think I meant?
"Now that you've written your column admitting your mistaken evaluation of Reggie Miller, I'm waiting for the one about Steve Nash," writes Canadian reader Richard Nemesvari, who says -- I think legitimately -- that his views aren't colored by nationalist bias.
Reader Bill Robinson agrees. "Seems to me that you may have to revisit your opinion of Steve Nash as well," he writes. "It looks to me like he is stepping up in the playoffs."
Nash is definitely stepping up in the playoffs. All he did in the last three games of the Dallas series was average 40 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds. He had an off day Sunday in the Game 1 loss to the Spurs, only scoring 29 points and handing out 13 assists.
But why should I take back what I said about Nash's play in the regular season just because he's stepped up in the playoffs?
The MVP is a regular-season award. My opinion of his regular season was that he was very, very good, but not the MVP of the league. He could score 100 points a night in the playoffs and it wouldn't change his regular season.
You're free to disagree with my assessment that Nash wasn't the MVP and most of you do. But you can't use the playoffs to bolster your argument. I mean, Dwyane Wade has been unconscious throughout these playoffs and Kevin Garnett is sitting at home, but nobody's suggesting that Garnett's 2004 MVP should now go to Wade.
So anyway, watching the Spurs pile up 121 points -- their highest regulation total all season -- in beating the Suns Sunday, I was reminded of that famous quote about Alabama football coaching legend Bear Bryant: "He can take his'n and beat your'n, and he can take your'n and beat his'n."
The Spurs can beat you their way, with a slowed down, grinding game. But if you want to get out and run the way the Suns do, they can beat you that way too.
Which is not to say the Suns have no chance here. San Antonio won't be holding Shawn Marion to three points a night for the duration of the series, and Brent Barry doesn't figure to regularly pour in 21 points on 8-of-12 shooting, 5-for-8 from beyond the arc. Though as Barry pointed out after the game, that's pretty much what the Spurs hired him to do.