The Playoff Hustle: Kobe Shares... His FuryRocket-less in '06

So it's been leaked that Steve Nash will repeat as the National Basketball Association MVP. We're not much for predictions. And we didn't do any of those end of season picks most sports fans & bloggers & journalists do, mostly because we're lazy, but also because we were rather conflicted. But Duke and Train always liked Nash as the pick. I actually think Duke preferred Lebron.

I, on the other hand, think the MVP is Kobe Bryant. I could go into the reasons, but Bill Simmons already did the legwork. Anyone who gets the Lakers into the playoffs, scores 81 in one game, 62 in three quarters of another, overcomes this proclivity of the press to shun teams barely over .500.

The fact is I don't even like Kobe. If I had to pick my least favorite player in the NBA it would be... Tony Parker. But Kobe's no slouch. As it were, if pressed to chose one favorite player, it would be Nash, which should validate this decision in some convoluted way. But Nash deserves MVP as much as Shawn Marion does. Or Chauncey Billups.

Anyway, that's beside the point. The point is that the leaking of this MVP business only throws fuel on Kobe's fire which he needs like a burning Iraqi oil field. Kobe's going to do to Steve Nash and the Suns what Hakeem Olajuwon did to David Robinson in '95 when The Dream thought he got snubbed for MVP.

You don't think Kobe knows? He knows. He knows everything.

He has the kind of glint in his eye that says "I have a booth tucked away behind the walls of my bedroom accessible only by a revolving bookcase that's decked floor to ceiling with flatscreen televisions and LCD computer monitors that keeps tabs on everything you ever say about me." Count on it, like the Lakers getting to Round 2.