Michael Ventre

Whenever I delve into the sheer lunacy of predicting the winner of an individual award in sports, I find it helpful to begin with the basics. So while pondering which NBA player will go on to have a scintillating second half and capture the coveted Most Valuable Player Award, I looked up the word “valuable.” There are several definitions, but this one seems apt:

“Valuable: Of great importance or use or service.”

When you stick “most” in front of it, it shakes out to mean, for the purposes here, which player reaches the absolute zenith among his peers in terms of providing importance or use or service to his club.

That makes this easy. Steve Nash.

This is not to say that others aren’t vitally important to their teams. A case can be made for several players, including Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Redd and Paul Pierce. If you snatched any of those men off their rosters and put them in street clothes, it would surely have a devastating effect on their teams. No question.

Still, the issue is “most” valuable.

That makes it easy. Steve Nash.

For one, Nash overall is having a better year statistically than he had last year, when he also won the MVP award. He is averaging 19.1 points, 11.3 assists and 4.4 rebounds per game, up from 15.5 points, 11.5 assists and 3.4 rebounds in 2004-05.

But I bring those numbers up only to appease those among the superficial, who will point to Bryant’s scoring average of 35.7, or Duncan’s averages of 20 and 12, or any other candidate and suggest that because the numbers sparkle brighter, therefore the player must be more valuable than Nash.

When Amare Stoudamire underwent microfracture knee surgery on Oct. 11, the air could have gone out of the Phoenix Suns. Their dynamic big man was first expected to miss four months, and now is not projected to return until sometime in March, if then. It might have been a devastating blow to the psyche of a team that was in contention for a NBA title last year, and was expected to be there with even more gusto this season.

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But did the Suns wallow in despair? Did they slowly sink into the draft lottery quicksand?

No, instead, they’re in first place in the Pacific Division with a 31-16 record, third-best in the West and fourth-best in the entire NBA. How is this possible?

Steve Nash.

He is one of those irrepressible forces in basketball that drives a team to victory through scoring, passing, rebounding and timely steals, but also with intelligence, determination and leadership. You rarely see Nash make a key turnover at a critical moment in a game. You rarely see him make a poor choice, or exhibit careless clock management. He is human, and therefore fallible, but not by much.

True, he isn’t exactly playing with development league castoffs. He still has some helpful mates, especially Shawn Marion but also Raja Bell, Leandro Barbosa, Eddie House and a candidate for the league’s most improved player award, Boris Diaw.

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Yet without Nash, this team at best would be hovering near the No. 8 spot in the playoffs, and at worst would drop into the lottery. Nash instead has the Suns among the league’s elite.

Remember, he isn’t only playing this year without Stoudamire, but also without Joe Johnson, a 6-7 swingman who averaged 17 points, five rebounds and four assists last year and was one of the NBA’s best three-point shooters. He bailed to Atlanta in the offseason.