NBA

LeBron-Durant MVP, All-Star battle on tap

NEW ORLEANS — The question has been debated and discussed for decades — or at least over the weekend here. For the Most Valuable Player award what really is the meaning of “valuable?”

It is not necessarily the best player. The interpretation usually comes around to who has done the most to make his team successful. In the NBA this season, the MVP award generally is viewed as a two-man race between

LeBron James of the 37-14, two-time defending champion Miami Heat and league-leading scorer Kevin Durant of the Thunder with the NBA’s best record, 43-12. The pair oppose other in Sunday’s All-Star Game.

In a vastly unscientific poll of All-Stars and NBA types who could be surveyed when they weren’t being asked about their desire to “star in a movie with much song and dance” or describe their ingredients if they were a “smoothie,” Durant was the clear-cut MVP choice.

“It’s probably Kevin Durant,” said 2006-07 MVP Dirk Nowitzki. “You can give it to LeBron probably any year you want. But Kevin, these past few weeks without [Russell] Westbrook when everybody thought they would be losing games, he’s been carrying them.”

The absence of Westbrook from the Thunder’s landscape has done almost as much as tilting the choice toward Durant as his recent string of 12 straight games with 30 or more points, the longest such run since Kobe Bryant’s 16 in 2003.

“Durant may be the MVP, he’s been unbelievable,” Net Joe Johnson said. “LeBron’s been unbelievable as well, but Durant went on that spree where he was scoring 30-plus in 12 straight games. That’s impressive. Still, LeBron is on a different planet.”

One guy who is sort of familiar with James’ thinking, Heat teammate Dwyane Wade, said all the Durant talk will drive James. Nothing personal, strictly motivational.

“He’ll hear it and I think it does [motivate him],” Wade said. “He still feels he’s the game’s best player, even with the sacrifices he had to make. What’s he got, four MVPs? He wants to be in the category with the others. He wants five, six, seven.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won six, Michael Jordan and Bill Russell won five, James and Wilt Chamberlain won four. Make no mistake, James wants to keep adding trophies — individual and team.

“Absolutely,” James said. “It means I’m well respected and it means everything I’ve worked on as far as my craft, I’m able to put into a game situation and it comes through for me. When you work to get better at things and they come to fruition, you’re very satisfied.”

James doesn’t just want to be remembered. He wants to be remembered as the best. Ever. Collect enough titles, enough MVPs and there is no room for debate.

“My personal goal is to be the greatest of all time,” James said. “I have an opportunity to maximize my career to be the greatest of all time. I feel like I can do that.”
All season, James and Durant have been compared back and forth. Durant admits on a scale of 1-to-10, he is “about 25” on how tired he is of the questions. But ask him 1-to-10, how much he would like the MVP, you get a 10.

“It would mean a lot. If you asked every guy in this room, they would say it means a lot,” Durant said. “Just to be named Most Valuable Player in a league full of great players would be a tremendous honor. One out of a million kids makes it to the NBA and it’s one out of a billion that makes it to the MVP.”

And so either is deserving of the MVP with a lot of the season left.

“It’s almost where you have 1-A and 1-B,” Minnesota’s Kevin Love said.

“Durant, he’s a helluva scorer, gets better every year in all facets of the game. Never seen someone of his height shoot the ball the way he’s capable of,” Knicks All-Star Carmelo Anthony said. “Flip side with LeBron, you have someone so powerful, so athletic who can do so many things to change the game.”

Two-time MVP Karl Malone said James might be hurt simply because of who he is.

“LeBron James is one of those special players that comes once in a lifetime. He will always start off the discussion of MVP, before they play the first game,” Malone said. “LeBron is the MVP when he wakes up every day.

But for everything he does, we all say, ‘OK, it’s LeBron.’

“But for Oklahoma City to lose Westbrook, and for what Kevin has done you’ve got to say that he is the MVP.”