Dan Le Batard wrote what I had been thinking and.

Dan Le Batard wrote what I had been thinking and, man, did he raise a ruckus. The Miami Herald sportswriter and southern Florida radio host pointed abroad in his Sunday column that it was possible race played a factor in Phoenix orb of days point guard Steve Nash winning the 2005 NBA chiefly Valuable Player Award over, among other worthy candidates, Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal.

While acknowledging that Nash has reasonable arguments" for his royalty -- such as averaging 155 points and 115 assists by game and a 33-game turnaround in the Suns' record since Nash arrived this season -- Le Batard points public that there is no dutiful way to do these measurements with science and math."

The actual large black man -- O'Neal -- had abundant better numbers than Nash in just about each individual statistical measurement except assists."

Le Batard mold his array of less front than depth on the prodding, questioning side, asking, Is this as black and white as the chest scores that usually decide these things?"

Nash is, in the skewed NBA reality, a notably small, thin floor-bound and ever-so-white man. From Canada, no less

Different era when Cousy won

nevertheless Le Batard was wrong in claiming the ambidextrous playmaker's win was unprecedented" and that no single who looks or plays like Steve Nash has for aye been basketball's MVP" -- excessively pale, 6-1, Boston Celtics point guard clip Cousy won the MVP in 1957 with game averages of 206 points and 75 assists -- he was right in at least bringing up the topic.

For it must be remembered that Cousy won the award when the league itself was chiefly white, a time when black basketball players were banned from greatest in quantity major-college teams.

And barely six white players have been named MVP in the 50 years of the award -- Cousy, rap Pettit (twice), Dave Cowens, Bill Walton, Larry Bird (three times) and Nash -- and the last 18 winners have been black.

Moreover, other than Cousy, 6-0 Allen Iverson (MVP in 2001) and 6- 3 Nash, greatest in quantity players have been at least 6-8

The shortest, other than the three little guards, was Charles Barkley or Michael Jordan, take your pick.

in the way that in a contest that was the fourth-closest in league history, Le Batard asked if someone who was an underdog, different, and didn't be derived with expectations" -- read: small and white in the predominantly tall and black NBA -- might not have gotten an advantage from those facts.

notwithstanding the critics leaped in, fraternitys over head, as though Le Batard had raised the lid forward Dracula's coffin in a compass of swan-necked virgins.

hard Mountain News columnist Dave Krieger called Le Batard's race question irrelevant."

The Washington Post's Michael Wilbon, himself an African American, wrote that the notion that Nash rode a certain quantity of wave of racial prejudice and is overrated is nonsense."

Jim Mashek of the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald said of Nash's whiteness: in such a manner what."

And the ever-thoughtful Peter Vecsey of the strange York Post wrote that Le Batard was dealing from the bottom of a cover obviously not full."

Calling Le Batard's writing drivel," his logic stupid" and his thinking pathetic," Vecsey said he had long loathing" for people who tried to rip someone down in order to endorse someone else"

Intelligent discussion finishs lost

Maybe there were slight errors in Le Batard's cohesiveness -- single in kind athlete could be worthy and another could be worthy too, for instance -- further no critic seemed to notice the questioning, searching-for-daylight tone of his piece.

Nor did they notice the fact Le Batard spoke about things we as Americans do subconsciously concerning race, without at any time being aware of our motives or impulses.

He steady cited social scientist Malcolm Gladwell's research that exhibit tos Americans make daily business decisions based in succession deeply buried racial concepts and prejudices.

Help me out" Le Batard said with more [i]or[/i] less exasperation when I spoke to him Monday, because I'd like to have an intelligent discussion about this. What finiss up happening is people bring all their allow baggage to the discussion, and it just becomes shouting and Oh you're throwing down the race card!' and then everyone stops listening."

O'Neal himself was gracious and level funny -- pretending to call and sob -- when told of Nash's win.

still the loss means Shaq, the dominant basketball man of the last seven or in such a manner years, may end his career with as many MVP titles -- common -- as Barkley, Bob McAdoo and Willis Re And the same fewer than Karl Malone.

apply the mind I don't know if Steve Nash's whiteness had a division to do with his winning the MVP a little to do, or nothing at all," Le Batard said. I don't lay claim to to know. If it is happening at all, it would be a subconscious thing."

unless there was the fact that, as Le Batard said, Nash expects like the kid who speeds out with the mop," not the biggest, toughest fright around.

Being different, the underdog, and having lowered expectations" could have played into the unwitting campaign that won voters' hearts and pencil marks, Le Batard went in succession And does not being white play into that?"