[timzerofive]

People are jumping back on the Kobe bandwagon because Lakers are winning again and made the playoff. Either way, he's always been a great player who has admirable skills, this year he has willed himself to become the best player in the league. I think the best player in the league deserves the MVP award.

In terms of Kobe shooting too much, if you watch the games and look at his shots in context to the game, he doesn't take more than 1 to 2 unecessary/force shots. Most of the time when Kobe shoots, you see this... they take the ball up the court, point tries to run the triangle, cannot get the ball to an open man, or the center cannot establish a good post position to setup the triangle. They run the shot clock down to under 9 second, cannot get a shot off, ditch it to Kobe and let him work. He gets most of his shot this way so it's not really him hogging the ball, but he's the go to guy when they cannot sucessfully run the offense. Why is he so scary? Because when the other team plays great defense, rotates well and shuts down Laker's set offense play, they then have to deal with Kobe who can do just about anything to score.

Does he make other players better? Perhaps not as obvious as Steve Nash does, but Smuch Parker is having a career year (have you even heard of him before this year), so is Kwame Brown (biggest flop in draft, or is he), and when's the last time you saw a team has one player getting tripple-double and another player scoring 50+ in the same game? He doesn't lead the same style some other players does, but he is leading this Laker team to its potential.

Lebron is a great player, but he lacks one major aspect to become a MVP, he got no defense! You can't only play half of the game, you have to play the entire court. Lebron will deserve the MVP when he becomes a defensive threat.

Jordan was called a ballhog up and down the court going for his 6 rings, but no one will deny today that he is perhaps the greatest. I think Kobe will reach his league pretty soon.