Michael Ventre

The debate rages anew. This year the candidates for the NBA’s Most Valuable Player are the usual suspects, striding the red carpet while onlookers gush and detractors hurl insults. In no particular order, this year’s class includes Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Gilbert Arenas, Tim Duncan, Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Chauncey Billups, Kevin Garnett, Carmelo Anthony, Carlos Boozer, Jason Kidd and Dwight Howard.

The major qualification is simple: If you yanked the player out of his lineup, would his teammates suddenly be reduced to jellyfish?

But there is a debate within the debate. It isn’t about who, but what.

What is an MVP?

Specifically, should an MVP be a scoring demon, or should he be a facilitator?

A test case of this argument takes place Sunday afternoon when Nash and the Phoenix Suns invade Staples Center to take on Kobe and the Lakers. Most of the attention for this contest will focus on it being a possible playoff preview, since the Lakers have been acting lately as if they’re unworthy of the West’s No. 6 spot and would be more comfortable at No. 7, which would pit them against the high-octane Suns in the first round.

But there is also the Nash-Bryant duel to ponder. It isn’t simply a matter of superstar vs. superstar. Rather, they serve as examples of a philosophical argument over what type of player is more valuable.

This season, Kobe has been schizophrenic, although without the delusions for the most part. His affliction is more of the hardwood variety. One game he is expected to score 50 or 60 points while taking almost every shot, the next he’s supposed to chill and get everyone involved in the offense. It’s a small wonder that he doesn’t fly to Vienna on off days for a quick tuneup.

Yet Kobe’s true nature demands that he score first. Currently he is the NBA’s leading scorer at just a tick over 31 points per game. He is a shooter, a driver, a dunker, a free-throw-sinking fool. It’s untrue that he has never met a shot he didn’t like. He’s met lots of them. They’re the ones his teammates take.

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Nash, on the other hand, has the opposite persona. He is a setup man first. He leads the league in assists at 11.6 per contest. If it wasn’t for Nash, Amare Stoudamire and Shawn Marion wouldn’t get nearly as many chances, and wouldn’t be averaging 20 and 17 points, respectively. Ditto for the rest of the Suns. It’s Nash who handles the basketball, draws the defense, sees the court, delivers the timely pass and almost always makes the right decision.

And as a side note, Nash is averaging almost 19 points a game. Bryant is averaging about five assists.

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Again, this isn’t a “Crossfire” about Nash and Bryant, per se, but rather what type of player is more valuable.

Nash makes everybody on his team better, because he distributes the ball and often draws double teams, which opens up easy opportunities for others. Kobe doesn’t make his teammates better directly; however, a case can be made that without his 50 points on certain nights, they’d be a lot less successful and therefore a lot more miserable.

But it’s a value thing. Valuable. If you took a player like Nash and a player like Bryant out of their respective lineups, the results would be disastrous in both cases. But Nash’s absence would probably be more significant because what he does affects just about everybody else on his team. If Kobe is subtracted from the Lakers’ lineup, it’s conceivable that the Lakers could survive by each player stepping up his scoring output a notch. Nash’s teammates are far more dependent on him than Bryant’s are on him.