Sean Deveney

Ballots for NBA awards are due Thursday, and the league office lets it be known that it prefers to have the votes in early. Usually, it's easy to comply with that preference, but not this year. That's because the race is simply too tight, the candidates too varied, the field too deep. And we're not talking some petty award like Sixth Man of the Year here — we're talking MVP, which is usually down to two or, at most, three candidates by now.

I count seven legitimate candidates, and I acknowledge that there's more than one school of thought as to how to evaluate those candidates. Right off the bat, let me say that the school of thought that poses the question, "How would the team do without this player?" will not even be dealt with here.

It's such a moronic hypothetical that it's not even worth discussing. We don't need Einsteinian thought experiments to vote for the MVP. The candidates just played 80 games with a certain team — why should we discount that and, instead, imagine an alternate reality in which the player did not exist?

OK, so what should be used when voting? I use three guidelines, equally balanced:

You should be able to shoot
Ultimately, basketball is a game of putting the ball in the hoop. An MVP should show some ability to do this. When Allen Iverson won the MVP while shooting 42 percent, it bothered me.

You should positively impact the guys around you
This has to do with things like brains and basketball IQ, and all that good stuff. Putting teammates into positions in which they can better succeed is something that doesn't necessarily show up in a player's stats. But in watching the team play, plus talking to scouts and personnel guys over the course of a year, you get a sense of who does this best.

You should win
Obviously, some players (Chauncey Billups, Dirk Nowitzki) have teams that are much better built for winning than others (Kobe Bryant, Elton Brand). But candidates should not be punished either way. The notion that Billups can't be MVP because he is surrounded by good players is absurd — the Pistons have won 64 games. That's about 10 games over where their record could be expected. Billups deserves credit for that.

Bryant's Lakers have won only 44 games, but that is still about four more than could be expected. Got to give him credit for that.

Now, let's get to it.

7. Elton Brand, Clippers

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If this was the Hobey Baker Award, which includes a player's character as part of the voting, Brand would get my vote. He averages 24.8 points and 10 rebounds, and the Clippers, surely, have exceeded expectations. He improved a lot this season, with his midrange jumper and his ballhandling, but he is still not quite on the elite level that other players on this list are.

6. Dwyane Wade, Heat
Miami is right about where it should be, record-wise, and part of that is because Wade has done such a tremendous job carrying the team through injuries. But there are still some holes in his game. He is an awful 3-point shooter (.171), and though he handles the ball a lot, 3.6 turnovers is too many for a shooting guard. The fact that Miami was only 2-12 against other division winners does not help. He's a notch below the top 5.

5. Chauncey Billups, Pistons
Billups takes, and makes, big shots in the clutch, and he is one of the best in the league at getting to the free-throw line — where he shoots .899. The Pistons have won 64 games because of the improvement in their offense, and that improvement stems from Billups' ability to run the break, and his knowledge of Flip Saunders' system. Still, his shooting percentage is poor, and Billups had too many awful, throwaway kind of games (you know, 3-for-10 for nine points) to be an MVP.

4. LeBron James, Cavaliers
Look at the roster, and the Cavaliers should be a 50-win team in a weak Eastern Conference. They've had injuries, true, but they still need to win twice to get 50. James has become a much better clutch player as the year has gone on, but he was too gun shy in the fourth quarter of games early in the year, and the MVP is a season-long award. James has become a much better shooter, but he must improve from the 3-point line (.335 is below average) and the free-throw line (.738, again, below average). He'll win an MVP, but it should not be this year.