kobe bryant wins mvp at last

it's been a long time coming, but kobe bryant finally has some hardware for his mantle... assuming he has a mantle. & assuming that you don't count his two all-star game mvp awards (which i don't). named the nba's regular season mvp for 2007-08, kobe ties karl malone for the longest nba tenure before winning the award in this, his 12th season. the shortest? that's shared by rookie mvp's wilt chamberlain (1960) & wes unseld (1969). it's good news for us kobe fans, since it takes him off the list of "greatest players never to win an mvp" & takes some of the sting out of him being robbed over the last two seasons.
in 2005-06, when steve nash won his 2nd straight mvp, kobe's numbers were nothing short of amazing. his points-per-game total of 35.4 would have placed 2nd all-time for mvp winners behind wilt chamberlain's 1960 total of 37.6, just ahead of michael jordan's 1988 total of 35.0. he made 978 baskets of a staggering 2173 attempts for 2832 points... which don't measure up to chamberlain's totals of the early 1960s, but c'mon... that wilt CHAMBERLAIN we're talking about! AND on jan 22, kobe became just the 2nd player in nba history to pass the 80-point mark for a single game, dropping 81 against the toronto raptors. the other player? that's right! wilt chamberlain.
now, i'm gonna get sent to the small table among sports commentators north of the border for suggesting that steve nash shouldn't have won the mvp (god knows they can't love steve nash enough up here), but he already HAD one. & while his offensive numbers were better in 05-06 than in 04-05, nash is a playmaker. & his assist total in 05-06 is far & away his lowest of the last four seasons.
2006-07 saw a slight decrease in kobe's points-per-game total (to a more terrestrial 31.6) but he did set a couple of significant marks over the year. a run of 4 straight games w/ 50+ points sits 2nd to... why, it's wilt chamberlain again who had a run of SEVEN straight in december 1961. & the season total of 10 50+ points games makes him the only player besides wilt chamberlain to have double digit 50+ point games in a season (chamberlain did it several times, including a mind-boggling 45 games w/ 50+ points in 1961-62!!). once again, however, the sports writers picked a white feller as their mvp... nothing against dirk nowitzki & all.
so kobe finally has an mvp of his own, & he won it in the year in which he become the youngest player to reach 20,000 career points (29 yrs, 122 days). & who knows? there may be more hardware to come this year as the lakers look to return to their glory days for the first time in the post-shaq era.