There's a school of thought — and it's a pretty smart school — that says every time we in the media go about referencing "The War on Terrorism" rather than, let's say, "The Crusade for Peace," we are giving the terrorists a little more energy, charging our lives with a little more fear and basically feeding a little more power to something so wrong.

Translated, that would mean that every time we hark back to the breakup of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal instead of the championships they won together, it fuels the falsehood that people can't live and work together instead of accentuating how they certainly can.

That's what makes Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki an interesting case study. There is one easy way to slant their story, because since they broke up, neither has won a championship.

But if you're going to be cynical about them, you're going to have to hurry up.

In about three months, one of them will be crowned — probably Nowitzki in Dallas, but Nash and Phoenix remain the best of the rest. Maybe then the NBA, if it truly wants to make good on the team-oriented concepts set up by making it easier for clubs to re-sign players and changing game rules to replace stagnant isolation with slick passing, will stop scheduling Bryant and O'Neal on Christmas and trot out Nash against Nowitzki already.

There is no discussing whether they like each other. They did before, and they still do.

After Nash left Dallas as a free agent in July 2004, Nowitzki was named godfather to Nash's twin daughters three months later. On the Friday before the All-Star Game last month, Nash was on hand with Nowitzki at the wedding reception for Nowitzki's sister.

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Nash and Nowitzki had never met until they came together to share a news-conference stage in 1998 after Nash came in a trade and Nowitzki came in the draft. They didn't exactly click to greatness on the floor that first season on a 19-31 team — Nash averaging 7.9 points, Nowitzki 8.2. But by the next season, they would watch soccer, drink beer, play guitar, go to movies, play one-on-one and hang out in every which way after the shy Nowitzki moved into the magnetic Nash's apartment complex. In so doing, they learned to win in Dallas seasons of 53, 57, 60 and 52 victories.

That true friendship is why even though Nash could win his third consecutive NBA MVP trophy — and join only Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird in accomplishing that feat — Nash is stumping for Nowitzki to win this time.

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