THERE IS ONLY ONE ANSWER TO THE MVP QUESTION

by E. Spencer Kyte, Bugs and Cranks

And that answer is LeBron James.

With all due respect to CP3, The Big Ticket and The Black Mamba, this has been the year where King James ruled the NBA and his performance deserves to be acknowledged.

Chances are LeBron's dominant season will go unrewarded, as the voting community seems to be split on the aforementioned three who had equally impressive seasons. The strange thing, however, is that when all the talking heads and vote casters discuss the candidacy of the consensus candidates, they usually make the correct point in asserting LeBron's qualifications. But still they side with someone else.

Cleveland is a 20 win team without LeBron James. Period. End of discussion. The fact that they won 45 games and earned the four seed in the East speaks volumes to the impact of the St. Vincent - St. Marys superstar.

Since I know - and you know - MVP isn't strictly about numbers, spending a lot of time on stats isn't going to happen. All that I will say is that LBJ went for 30/8/7 per this season. You have to figure that if Larry Hughes could have knocked down an open 15 footer or two before getting sent to Chi-town, the line would have read 30/8/8. Still...

The main criteria for MVP is how valuable that player is to their team. No one, myself included, would argue that these four cats aren't all vitally important to the success of their franchises, but take a look at the rosters and tell me how LeBron doesn't trump the competition?

KG had a huge impact on the Celtics, there is no denying that. But that team also has two multi-time All-Star selections as Options B and C in Paul Pierce and Jesus Shuttlesworth.

Kobe gets all the credit for the improbable season the Lakers had, but shouldn't some of that credit go to the bench guys that he so desperately wanted to get away from at the start of the year? And Andrew Bynum's performance pre-injury? And the Pau Gasol theft from Memphis? And The Zen Master?

Chris Paul is on a similar level as LeBron in terms of impact to his team, but even the Hornets managed to play well in the absence of their floor general. David West was an All-Star this season and Tyson Chandler has been a difference maker on the defensive end for a couple seasons now.

Which leaves us with LeBron.

Will he win the award? No, probably not.

Should he? You know my answer.

All hail King James.