Cast your mini-vote for MVP and the other awards

April 2nd, 2008, 3:21 pm · Post a Comment · posted by KEVIN DING, OCREGISTER.COM

LOS ANGELES — The e-mailman delivered the most valuable e-mail of the season to my inbox Tuesday, so it’s time to begin officially my mental debate regarding how to vote for the major NBA awards. If you have some ideas or advice on how I should be leaning, lemme know.

Here are the ballots I have — these are all there are, because NBA club executives vote for the Executive of the Year award (the only other major one there is) — with last season’s winner and then how my official ballot (in order) looked in parentheses:

MVP: Dirk Nowitzki (my vote: Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, LeBron James)
Coach: Sam Mitchell (Avery Johnson, Jeff Van Gundy, Jerry Sloan)
Rookie: Brandon Roy (Roy, Andrea Bargnani, Rudy Gay)
Most Improved: Monta Ellis (I did not receive this ballot last season)
Defensive: Marcus Camby (Ron Artest, Bruce Bowen, Camby)
Sixth Man: Leandro Barbosa (Barbosa, Manu Ginobili, Jerry Stackhouse)
All-NBA by position: Nowitzki, Duncan, Amare Stoudemire, Bryant, Nash (James, Nowitzki, Duncan, Bryant, Nash … with second team of Shawn Marion, Garnett, Camby, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Kidd and third team of Chris Bosh, Elton Brand, Stoudemire, Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups)

Here’s what Phil Jackson just said about the MVP race: “Kobe’s best year ever as far as an overall team player.”

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