Super Sunday came two weeks early at the Staples Center.
A congregation of 18,997 delirious fans had just witnessed the beloved Kobe Bryant put up the second-highest single game point total in NBA history. Now, they emerged from their temple of worship and carried their gospel across metropolitan Los Angeles and beyond: Kobe for MVP.
Sure, it was nice that the Los Angeles Lakers ended a two-game losing streak and avoided falling to a mere one game over .500. Yes, overcoming an 18-point deficit at home against a 14-27 team was a nice sidebar. But the important thing was that Kobe Bryant had just scored 81 points and that's what the price of admission was all about.
Basketball is fun again in Los Angeles.
And why not? The man whose boyish petulance reduced the 2004 Western Conference champions to a lottery team in the course of one season is now the odds-on favorite to win his first MVP award and Los Angeles Lakers fans couldn't be happier.
In the process, their team might even escape the lottery ranks this spring.
We are in the age of individual achievement. The team superstar has become the reason we watch sports, much as the caramelized popcorn is the reason we buy a box of Cracker Jacks. Championships are reduced to the shrink-wrapped consolation prize stuffed inside.
And the greater our appetite for heroes, the more those coated kernels cost. What I paid 50 cents for as a child now sets my son back $2.99 in the movie theatre. Where I would dump out the contents in search of the secret decoder ring that was the real goal of all my purchases, my son cannot afford to. Even if he could, his last prize was nothing more than a miniature three-sheaf comic book. The prize has lost its significance.
Last year, the prize lost its significance in Boston and New York, as well.
Living in this Mecca of baseball that is New England, I recall the thrill of the late season race as it wove through the final weeks of 2005. Game after game found us on the edge of our seats as Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz pounded out homer after homer and took curtain calls to the resonant chants of "M-V-P" in Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, respectively. At stake were both the home run derby and AL MVP.
Despite their best efforts, A-Rod and Big Papi got only cameo roles in October, and each watched the ALDS at home. In the end, A-Rod did prevail during November's awards week and Yankees fans found their redemption, albeit retroactively. They held it over Boston yet again. It was another successful season in The Bronx after all.
There is no rule that specifies Most Valuable Player and World Champion must be mutually exclusive. It just seems to work out that way the preponderance of times.
Martin St. Louis of the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning was the most recent to attain the dual accomplishment, grabbing the Hart Memorial Trophy and Stanley Cup in 2004. Before St. Louis, the feat had only been accomplished twice in the preceding 16 NHL seasons. Mark Messier did it in 1990 and Joe Sakic in 2001.
Football is a little murkier. Until 2002, NFL awards were like boxing champions — autonomous fiefdoms each coronated their own victors. Of the 22 seasons prior to the Associated Press's totalitarian regime, three separate MVPs were selected on five occasions. However, Kurt Warner was a unanimous choice in 1999, the same year his St. Louis Rams won Super Bowl XXXIV. Today, fans the world over will find out whether Shaun Alexander can displace Warner as this sport's most recent dual winner.
Since Major League Baseball continues to partition two distinct leagues — and, by extension, award distinct honors — there should be twice the opportunity to find MVPs residing on World Series rosters. Nonetheless, you'd have to go back to 1988 to find an MVP that won a World Series ring. That, of course, was the Los Angeles Dodgers' Curt Gibson. That same year, Jose Canseco, whose Oakland A's lost to the Dodgers in the World Series, garnered the AL's MVP award. Since 1988, only five MVPs have made it to the Fall Classic.
Basketball has remained the exception. In the 25 years since Larry Bird and Magic Johnson redefined the modern NBA, 12 MVPs won NBA titles and another six got as far as conference champions. Tim Duncan is the most recent case, winning both in 2003. Michael Jordan is the most prodigious, accomplishing it in 1991, 1992, 1996, and 1998.
Why basketball should be an anomaly is not surprising. The composition of a basketball team lends itself to dominance by one player who can more effectively dictate a game's outcome with a supporting cast of four than his counterparts can with five or eight or ten teammates.
Virtually every offensive set is designed to provide touches for the NBA superstar. Only the NFL quarterback is guaranteed a similar benefit. However, NBA Superstar does not have to give the ball up to make something happen. He needs neither a running back nor the reliable hands of an open receiver for success.
Even more, he does not have to beat both a primary defender in the form of defenseman or pitcher or pass rusher, then a secondary line of goalie, shortstop, or safety. He can shoot wide-open jumpers all night or drive against 20-year-old opponents in a league where defense has gone the way of the dinosaur.
But if he is so inclined, the NBA superstar can make himself a constant presence on both sides of the ball. Certainly, players of the ilk of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajawon, and Tim Duncan have made this a part of their legacy. They do not have the same dependency on others for victory as do hitter and pitcher, right wing and defenseman, quarterback and cornerback.
So today, as the Seattle Seahawks look for their first ever world championship, Shaun Alexander will attempt to put his own name in the history book. To succeed, he will have to find the end zone, perhaps more than once. He will have to beat Joey Porter and Pittsburgh's 3-4 defense that thrives on the cut-back style of running for which Alexander is renowned. He'll also have to be aware of the omniscient Troy Polamalu and his supporting secondary.
Even if he does all these things, Shaun Alexander will have to stand on the sidelines for half a game with fingers crossed. He'll have to watch his defense contain Ben Roethlisberger, corral Jerome Bettis, cover Antwaan Randal El.
Only when all these things are accomplished may he utter the obligatory "I'm going to Disney" line and partake of the champagne bath that will be the Seahawks' locker room.
On this night, Shaun Alexander will experience the raison d'etre of a professional athlete, the euphoria of reaching a summit that could only be attained as a team. On this night, his MVP trophy will maintain its lonely vigil on the mantel back home, a shrink-wrapped prize inside this 2005 season.
On this night and for all the many to follow, the Lombardi Trophy will become for the fans in Seattle the caramelized popcorn in their box of Cracker Jacks.
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