One of the things you pick up as a reporter is the idea that you don't root for teams or players, you root for good stories. Objectivity doesn't have much to do with this. You root for good stories because, regardless of how talented a writer you are, it's easier to write a good story when the subject itself is compelling.

A lot of basketball reporters were likely rooting for the Rockets and Heat to make the NBA Finals this season because the Shaq-Yao matchup offers such an attractive story. Likewise, every baseball writer last season rooted for the Yankees and Red Sox to advance to the ALCS, because that's the story in baseball everyone wants to read about.

Sportswriters need an angle, and it only helps when that angle is entertaining and in demand.

This is why it wasn't a surprise to me that Steve Nash was voted the Most Valuable Player of the NBA this season. All season long, he's been the best story in the NBA, the embodiment of everything old-school writers chew up -- a throwback, a team player, the unselfish point guard, the guy who "makes his teammates better." A logical case can be made for Nash, both with statistics and without, but his MVP candidacy was driven by the stories surrounding his season. His actual production, it seemed, was secondary.

Not surprisingly, most of the stories I've read about Nash have actually been pretty tough to understand, partly because they're so cliche-laden and mostly because the arguments in the stories are so ambiguous. We've all heard the lines, "Nash was the player who sparked this team," or "Nash brought that extra 'something' the Suns have so badly needed for so long." But does anyone actually know what that means?

Rule of thumb: As Albert Einstein once said (I might be paraphrasing), if you can't explain something clearly, you don't understand it fully. In light of that, I think there's a reason why the arguments for Nash have been so vague. It's because the writers don't understand them fully.

That reporters root for stories can explain why Nash and Shaq were the two leading vote getters this year, whereas players such as Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Dirk Nowitzki were largely overshadowed. Duncan, of course, is a boring candidate to win, 1) because he's won it twice already, and 2) because he's boring, his team's boring, and nothing he does is a good story because he's so predictably great. It's as if the writers are thinking to themselves, "Well, I think Duncan should get my vote, but if there's somebody else who's a sexier pick, I'd rather go with him." A lot of TV analysts shamelessly admit this, not in those words, of course, but more along the lines of, "Tim Duncan's a great player and a deserving candidate, but......"

I mean, if he's such a great player and such a deserving candidate, why not just vote for the guy? Pretty obvious, if you ask me -- because they feel they need a story to justify their vote, and Duncan is almost never a good story, at least not a fun one.

For one reason or another, being the best player in the league is never enough to win you the MVP award, in the NBA and in every other major sport, it seems.

(As for the other two: Garnett didn't garner much attention in the MVP race because his teammates sucked this season. And I haven't heard a thing about Nowitzki all season, which is puzzling, since the Mavericks' success this season was a pretty good story. Despite losing Nash to free-agency, they won six more games this season than last, and Nowitzki was the biggest reason.)

I've softened my stance against Nash winning the MVP. I don't agree with it, but I can definitely understand it, and I've read and heard a lot of clear, sensible arguments in his favor. It just disturbs me that those arguments didn't come from the writers who did the actual voting.

In defense of those voters, though, at least nobody this year pulled a Lacy Banks, i.e. not voting for someone because he wasn't particularly nice during interviews. For that, I'm grateful.