Mr. MVP

You hear that said all the time about LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers' star forward who, in a public celebration Sunday at the University of Akron, was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player in 2009-10 for the second consecutive season. Just the other day, for instance, Cavs coach Mike Brown said: "He can continue to grow by leaps and bounds for as many years as he has left in this league. ... The sky's the limit for him."

Or as James himself said in accepting the award again in his hometown at a party open to all: "The way I approach the game, I know the sky's the limit with an individual accolade like this."

You hear it so much -- the sky's the limit for this guy -- you start to wonder if maybe it's backwards. What if LBJ is the outlier, the one at the extreme, the force establishing the boundaries for all others and everything else, including the sky? As in:

This guy's the limit for the sky.

Say it fast and it starts to sound right.

The folks in the stands at Rhodes Arena Sunday -- the "second home court'' for James' high school team at St. Vincent-St. Mary's, given the overflow crowds drawn to SVSM's too-small gym to see him then -- simply went with the "M-V-P! M-V-P!" chant that, in this case, was as accurate and timely as it was redundant.

You hate to surrender to a shoe company's slogan but we are, in fact, all witnesses. To a multiple MVP winner, something only 11 other men in league annals can claim. To a back-to-back honoree, one of just 10 and the first since Steve Nash in 2005 and 2006. To a fellow who has a shot now to join Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell as the only players to win three in a row (MV3s, if you will) and who -- if Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy is to be believed, rather than filtered as impassioned lobbying on behalf of his guy Dwight Howard -- has a stranglehold on the Maurice Podoloff trophy for the next decade or more.

"LeBron will win the MVP every year until he retires," Van Gundy said this spring. "LeBron has to go into the year and basically lose the MVP. You guys have decided he's the MVP."

Uh, no. The "you guys" in Van Gundy's comment is a morphing, unpredictable, headstrong and frequently wrong body of voters who couldn't even decide whether to tote an umbrella on a cloudy day. At some point, as transcendent as James might get, many of the writers and broadcasters would cast votes for someone else just out of boredom.

They certainly couldn't agree unanimously that James was the best player in the NBA this season -- and by a wide margin. Back in 2000, former CNN and ESPN sportscaster Fred Hickman took heat for giving his vote to Allen Iverson rather than Shaquille O'Neal, spoiling what would have been O'Neal's sweep. A year ago, 12 of the 121 voters didn't see James as MVP, despite his ascendancy individually and as a team leader. This year, 116 of the 123 available first-place votes went James' way, with Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant receiving four and Howard getting three. No voter ranked James lower than third on the five-slot ballot.

"Every night I step on the court, I try to be the best player on the floor," James told the hometown throng. "And every night fans or media, you guys, leave a game, I want you to say 'LeBron James was the best player on the court.' Every single night."

OK, here's another reason why James might not be hoarding the next 10 MVP trophies. Given his level of performances and, more than that, his maturity, his poise, in handling the spotlight and success thrust upon him, the guy has to be 32 years old. No? Then maybe Stan Van's right.

"I'm always humbled by anything I can do individually," James said Sunday, "because I understand this is a team game and any time you're singled out, that means you've done something special. It's definitely humbling. ... It's great."

The 6-foot-8, 270-pound forward threw himself into developing on both the individual and team fronts this season. He ranked second in the league in scoring (29.7) and averaged 7.3 rebounds, 8.6 assists (most ever by a forward, sixth-best in the NBA), 1.0 blocked shots and 1.6 steals (ninth). Fifteen times James led the Cavs across the board in points, rebounds and assists, and he was a league-high plus-650 in plus/minus rankings. Defensively, he became the bogeyman lurking over every opponent's shoulder with a transition layup in mind. Offensively, James honed his shooting range and was accurate a career-best 50.3 percent of the time.

Collectively, the Cavaliers snagged the No. 1 seed for the second consecutive season, topping 60 victories both times. Cleveland has had the league's best home record for two years, too, going 74-8 at Quicken Loans Arena. Confronted by -- after largely lobbying for -- a revamped roster from the squad that exited last spring's postseason, James blended new faces and talents such as Shaquille O'Neal, Antawn Jamison, Anthony Parker and Jamario Moon into a group that wasn't exactly broken to begin with.

He then vowed to take all of the above to another level in this postseason, which doesn't figure into MVP voting but speaks volumes about the guy who won. "When I said that it wasn't about on the court," James explained during the Chicago series, "it was more about preparation and mentally what was going on with the game. Every second, every minute. Stepping up my game on the court, I've done that a little bit."

What's left? Why of course, the hardware no player can possibly win by himself, yet the stuff that gets used constantly to define the game's greatest stars, qualifying or eliminating them as the case may be. None of the other major sports holds its superstars as accountable for winning championships as the NBA. And none holds it against those who come up short quite as severely.

Russell, Jordan, Bird, Johnson, even Chamberlain, Erving, Robertson and West? They're in. Barkley, Ewing, Malone, Stockton, Miller? Nope, they're out. No NBA title, no chunky championship ring, so no rights or privileges in the lodge of the league's very best, at least the way some people see it.

James included.

"The only reason I do what I do on the court is to compete for an NBA championship," he told the Akron crowd. "I understand that, until I win that, I won't go down as one of the greatest players to play this game. Individual accolades definitely come into account, but team is what it's all about. That's my only goal right now. I can't name something that I haven't done individually in my short career that's bigger than an NBA championship. ... This is the closest I've been to it right now with the team that we have, and we're looking forward to the challenge."

So O'Neal is in (four rings), Bryant is in (four as well) and even Dwyane Wade qualifies, if his stats and victory totals stay impressive over time. But James is out? Until he wins at least one title with the Cavs or someone else?

Doesn't seem right, but there it is. And opinion from within ranges all over the map.

Were the Boston Celtics' primary stars -- Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen -- any greater in July 2008 than they were in April 2008, before and after they broke through together for their first taste of real triumph? Would James rank any higher today in the pantheon of players -- the MVMVPs, if you will -- had Cleveland beaten San Antonio in the 2007 Finals? Will he be transformed somehow if the Cavs get there again this spring and win four games rather than three against some West opponent?

No, said Boston's Allen. Yes, said Celtics coach Glenn (Doc) Rivers.

"That's just a category they put you in," Allen said earlier Sunday. "But nothing changes. It's a prestige that you can carry for yourself. But as a matter of fact, a lot of people will forget as you move around the world and you go on in life. The enthusiasts might remember that you won a championship and every now and then you'll bring your ring out and say, 'I won it this year.' And people will say, 'Oh yeah, you did win it. Who was on your team?' People forget and rightfully so.

"Sports can be fickle. If you polled this [Celtics] team and the Cleveland team or whoever else is playing in the postseason, and asked them, 'Who won the championship in 1989?' I'd know it was the Pistons but most of these guys are so much younger they wouldn't know. It's just something people use to make it easier to say who was great and who wasn't."

Said Rivers: "Once LeBron wins, yeah, he'll be a greater player. Because he'll understand the value of the little things. When you go back on our year that we won, you can go to five or six possessions in all those different series. The jump ball play with LeBron and Paul, where LeBron should have boxed him out, Paul dove on the floor, we got the ball. That may have been the single biggest play of the series, a loose ball we got.

"There was that one play where Eddie House got the ball where he always shoots it, but we talk about making 'the next pass,' and he did the right thing, throwing it to P.J. Brown wide open, and P.J. makes it. That's that trust. When you win, you learn all those little things are important."

It sounded like, as much as stamping a great player with validation as a winner, capturing a championship puts a superstar through a process that makes him, early or late, that much better. That much more savvy and aware.

"After the stamp, maybe you realize the value of the little things more," Rivers said. "Or you appreciate them. Then you do them for the rest of your life."

It's a nuance thing, a six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other consideration. But then, the way he's going, James wants all 12 anyway.

NBA.com