NBA MVP

To be an MVP:

It takes more than highest average points scored per game, highest average rebounds grabbed per game, highest average minutes played per game, most dunks, most ESPN highlights, most twitter followers.

It takes leadership, confidence, and clutch performance. At the end of the fourth quarter, make or break time of a close game, can you step up, take the ownership and responsibility, and make that play that is the game winner? Are you your team's go-to person when they need that big 3 to tie it up or that 100% freethrow percentage that will get you the W? Does your team and your coach trust you to put you at the top of every option, knowing that you'll make it but if you don't you'll take full responsibility?

In all of these leadership, confidence, and fourth-quarter game-winners, Lebron James fails. He does not trust himself to make that last shot. He does not have the confidence and leadership skills to carry him through botching the last opportunity his team has to win. He takes very few chances, and when he does, he usually falls short because he lacks the confidence and he does not want the responsibility of being the reason his team lost. Instead of learning and growing stronger from those opportunities, he fears them to the point that, instead of taking that chance that otherwise he would absolutely take, he throws it off to another player. He's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, but because he doesn't even dare to do, he is triple damned for running away.

Kevin Durant for MVP. All day every day no question.

Better luck next time, Lebron. Maybe you can learn to have four solid quarters instead of three ridiculous quarters and a nose-diving fourth.