Report: Kobe earns first MVP

[NWOWolfpack]

Report: Kobe earns first MVP

LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant has won the NBA's MVP award for the first time, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site Friday night, citing anonymous sources familiar with the outcome of voting by media members.

The newspaper reported that commissioner David Stern will be in Los Angeles next week to present the trophy to Bryant.

"We have not been told anything by the league," Lakers spokesman John Black told The Associated Press.

Bryant, who entered the season as the league's two-time defending scoring champion, was third in the MVP voting twice -- after the 2002-03 campaign, when he averaged 30 points for the first time, and again last season, when Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki won the award.

Bryant averaged 28.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.8 steals while playing in all 82 games despite tearing a ligament in his right pinkie finger in February. A hand specialist recommended surgery, but Bryant decided to put it off until after the Olympics this summer.

He led the Lakers to the best record in the Western Conference and a sweep of Denver in the first round of the playoffs.

Bryant, second in the NBA in scoring behind Cleveland's LeBron James, will be the first Lakers player to win the MVP award since Shaquille O'Neal was a near-unanimous choice in 2000. Other previous Lakers to win the award dating to 1956, when it was first presented, were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, who each won it three times. Abdul-Jabbar also won three with the Milwaukee Bucks.

ESPN

[Beam&Coke]

So the lesson to be learned here kids - is that if you want to be recognized for your achievements...you should first force yourself on a young woman and then let your money and fame save you, followed a few years later by being the biggest crybaby in sports by threatening not to play for the team that just made you one of of the top paid athletes in the world and finally you need to top it all off by actually sharing the ball with your teammates so that you look like a valuable player on a championship caliber team (remember that you have to make sure that you publicly express that you want no part of the team prior to the season starting...). Good luck Kids - another great NBA example for our impressionable youth to follow

[GamePro 55]

^^he may be a formerly accused rapist but he is still the best player on the planet.