Cosellout had an interesting story the other day about Steve Nash that drummed up a lot of conversation here and around the web. It's multi-faceted. Read the whole thing. But the part that everyone remembers is the idea that being white helps Steve Nash get positive PR, including two MVP trophies.
My take is complex. I think Steve Nash gets extra credit for being highly entertaining. I think he gets extra credit for being someone people genuinely adore as a human being. I think he got a ton of extra credit for engineering a total reversal of Phoenix's fortunes -- they were terrible untl he got there, and then they were excellent. Players in that situation will always get votes by the bushel.
I don't know that I agree with Cosellout on everything, but I do find it impossible to believe race is no factor in this. I just don't see the evidence to support the idea that any group of people as large as the voters for this award is enlightened enough to be truly color blind. Every voter might be racially well-meaning (which is all you can ask for, I guess). But that doesn't mean they're equally comfortable with player A and player B. It works on your subconscious, you know?
That doesn't mean Steve Nash isn't a bona fide contender for the MVP trophy. But winning that thing in a massive landslide? When he's one of the league's least useful defenders? From predominantly white voters? I think it's a frustrating and circular conversation -- you'll never prove either point -- but I have to believe there's a little something racial there.
But what do I know? I'm no MVP voter. Are any of them piping up to defend those votes?
Step right this way, Sports Illustrated's Jack McCallum, who makes an elegant case that by and large NBA writers do not see race when they vote:
The writers voted Allen Iverson MVP in 2001, and I'd wager that 90% of us 90+ percenters didn't speak two words to A.I. the entire season, not to mention the obvious fact that Iverson does not exactly fit that white-mainstream template. We voted Tim Duncan back-to-back MVPs in '02 and '03, and most of us understand that ol' T.D. wouldn't pee on us if we were on fire. Larry Bird won three MVPs in a row in the mid-'80s, then never won again because Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were better, healthier and more deserving. Cosellout suggests that the race issue didn't get nearly enough attention in '05, when Nash drubbed Shaquille O'Neal in the voting for his first MVP. It didn't get nearly enough attention for this reason: It's a ridiculous point. I can't remember an easier vote I've ever cast. Nash resurrected a dying team that was almost helpless in the seven games he missed. Shaq was great, but he was possibly not even the MVP on his own team, Dwyane Wade having come into his own by that time.
Nash's victory in '06 wasn't so clear-cut. I didn't vote for Nash -- I went for Chauncey Billups because a) I saw him torch Nash for 28 points in the second half of a late-season game in Detroit and b) I was following the Suns that season and P.J. Carlesimo, then a Spurs assistant, was already calling me "House Boy." But one of the prevailing story lines of that season was the lack of a consensus MVP. Nash, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki, Wade and Billups were all candidates, and, in the end, Nash won.
Why? Because he was white? Nonsense. Voters have their prejudices, and I think I can speak for the majority of them when I say the following are ours. We're prejudiced toward passers and team-oriented set-up guys. They don't come around all that often, but we embraced Nash the same way we embraced Magic.
Back in the '80s there was a lot of hue and cry about voting for Jordan because he was not that type of player, but, in the end, he was just too damn good not to vote MVP. We're prejudiced against guys who foment discontent on their own teams. That's why Kobe, clearly the best player in the league the last two years, will have a hard time winning an MVP. And we're prejudiced toward guys on winning teams.
