MVP

Ok:

Since it's pretty much a toss-up between the two, I'll say that if the Hornets win the West, Chris Paul should get it, and if not, then Kobe should. In both cases they are absolutely the engine that drives the team, and both teams are championship-caliber.

Though LeBron's putting up ridiculous numbers, his team just isn't good enough and besides, it's in the East. And though KG just is the Celtics, I think that his individual contributions just aren't pronounced as they are with Chris Paul and Kobe.

Really, though, I think they should wait until after the Finals before selecting an MVP, and make the MVP award applicable to the whole season + playoffs. Screw this Finals MVP bullshit. The separation of the two awards leads to some ridiculous results, like Steve Nash winning MVP twice despite the fact that he was never even able to get his team to the Finals (let's not even talk about Dirk Nowitzky last year). It should be the case that, more often than not, the player who wins MVP is on the championship team.

Also: none of this meta crap. None of this "we owe him one" or "he'll have plenty of time in the future to win one" stuff. It's this sort of twisted thinking that somehow resulted in Charles Barkley winning the MVP ahead of Michael Jordan at the height of the Bulls' reign (and, in 96-97, Jordan again being denied in favor of Karl Malone). If one dominant player leads his team to the championship six times, he should get the MVP six times.

Now, obviously, if the MVP were awarded like how I'm proposing, there wouldn't be any great controversy here. We'd wait for, say, the Hornets/Lakers to collapse in the second round and then vote in Kobe/Paul. But instead we have this endless brow-furrowing over who is the most valuable player in the regular season--as if the regular season counted for anything when considered apart from the playoffs.