Who Gets Your Vote for MVP?
Personally, I think KG should win it. But for this purpose let's not include Garnett so we can try to eliminate bias. Here are the guys I would nominate for top candidates: Chris Paul Kobe Bryant Lebron James Derron Williams Dwight Howard Tracy McGrady My vote goes to Derron Williams. Williams has done everything that Paul has this year... and plays a much more solid all-around game. Although, Paul leads the league in steals, he is a below average overall defender. He is picked on by bigger guards, and as we saw with Rondo, doesn't have the ability to stay with the quickest guards. Williams on the other hand, is one of the top defensive guards in the league with the rare combination of speed and size that allows him to muscle Jason Kidd and stay with Tony Parker. Both are great guards, but Williams is the MVP.

I'm going against the rules and picking KG. Most Valuable Player? If it wasn't for KG coming to the celtics where would we be? You can talk about stats all you want but if KG wasn't here the bench we have wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have Posey, house, cassel, brown. They would have gone to a contender. If the celtics were in the west (which we have a better record against than we have against the east) KG would be considered MVP but because we are in the "weaker" conference and there are 2 other stars on the team they won't pick him. Then the intensity that he brings in during the games and even at practice. He took the team from 24 wins to 61+ wins. ...instead Lebron who gets his team just over .500 will win MVP because he is the most popular....

My vote goes to LeBron James. Paul is terrible defensively, so I can't vote for him. KG's great, but he would have just about the worst stats ever for an MVP winner. With Paul Pierce mitigating his glory, KG won't win. Kobe will probably win it, because the league and the media have been conditioning the public for that eventuality for the past month, same as they did for Nowitzki last year. Kobe will get it, but LeBron should. He is, quite simply, the best player in the league. Oh, and I do love Deron Williams. I consider him the better player over Chris Paul, for the reasons Fire Doc so eloquently stated above.

That's it? Really? That's all the opinions we're going to get in this thread? Wow. I thought it was a tremendous topic. What can we do to get these forums cranked-up?

I'd love the forums to get cranking. Our readership has gone up this season... but we're nowhere near CelticsBlog. And when you've got a site where people can make their comments on the front page... then you've got fewer people heading into the forums. We're going to some kind of redesign in the offseason. I don't like the way things are laid out. We need to consolodate some things and clean the site up. Hopefully that helps. As for the MVP race... I'm going to go with LeBron. He's the only reason that team is even in the playoffs. I try to judge the MVP by trying to guess what would happen if the player was removed from the team... and I think the Lakers and Cleveland would suffer the most. The fact that the C's went 7-2 without KG kinda hurts his chances. I think LA is better equipped to handle life without Kobe than Cleveland is to handle life without LeBron.... so LeBron is the MVP to me

It's going to be either Paul or Bryant, and I'd prefer Paul. James should get it, but won't.

I think LeBron is making everyone on that team better just by being on the floor. He's a small forward averaging 7 assists per game... not to mention averaging 8 rebounds. His supporting cast is weak at best. I think Derron Williams is a legit choice... but I think Boozer is a very good player... and guys like Kirilenko and Korver are very good role players... and even Okur is a very solid contributor. The Jazz are a pretty good team. They might not have a ton of guys who scare you individually... but the players they have perform their roles very well. And lets not forget how Utah gets ignored by the national media. There's no doubt Williams should be getting more press.... but he's mired in Utah. I think Williams might actually end up being a better PG than Paul... but he's not going to get many votes at all.

I agree.... he has absolutely no chance to win, and will continue to take a back-seat to Paul in the national media.... but if I were a writer, he gets my vote. I disagree about Carlos Boozer. He is easily the worst 20/10 guy ever to play the game. The main reason why Deron Williams is the MVP, is because he can make a piece of trash like Boozer into a 21 ppg scorer.

I'd go with Paul on the basis that as much as I don't like him I'd have never expected the Hornets to be any better than 4th or 5th in the west

by the way.... GotGarnett is dead. There are just too many Boston blogs... and Matty G doesn't have the time to blog every day. We're hoping to have him back as a contributor for the playoffs