Tim Shaffer / Reuters file

Suns guard Steve Nash's stats are up, and more importantly, he raises the level of play around him, NBCSports.com contributor Michael Ventre writes.

After Nash, Bryant is the most ballyhooed candidate for the award. But he won’t win it.

And it’s not because of the selfish/unselfish argument between Kobe’s supporters and detractors. Rather it has to do with his teammates.

To win the MVP, it helps if a player has help. Ideally he should have at least enough good to decent teammates around him to keep his team in contention for the playoffs and beyond. Kobe Bryant doesn’t have this.

Oh, it appeared so at different junctures of the season thus far. The Lakers have looked surprisingly competent at times, and have created the illusion that they might do some damage in the postseason.

But their margin of error is infinitesimal. Their roster isn’t exactly the ‘90s Bulls, and right now it’s suffering from having Lamar Odom and Chris Mihm on the pine with injuries. Rather than building toward a climax, the Lakers appear now like the kind of team that will spend the second half of the season slowly slipping into the foreboding swamp of non-qualifiers.

And as the weeks go by toward April, Kobe will wear down, little by little, under the weight of carrying a franchise. His scoring average will drop, and so will his shooting percentage.

Therefore, instead of Kobe being perceived as a star who has willed his team to a playoff berth, he will instead be considered a high-profile curiosity on an otherwise nondescript assemblage.

It’s not impossible that Kobe could get the nod anyway. After all, Alex Rodriguez won the AL MVP in 2003. But that was only the second time in history it has gone to a member of a last-place team. And that’s baseball, where a player’s individual worth to a club is considered less dependent on what his teammates do than in basketball.

If the Lakers don’t make the playoffs, then how valuable could Kobe Bryant be considered?

Answer: Not nearly as valuable as a player who, against all logic, leads his team into the upper echelon of the Western Conference.

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