NBA: At last, Kobe Bryant takes the MVP award he richly deserves

The NBA have finally officially announced the 2007/08 season’s MVP recipient: Kobe Bryant. This has been a long time coming for the leader of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise, yet it's no “he had it coming so let’s give it to him” award as it was well deserved for the performances Kobe has put in throughout this very season.

There was a legit debate of who should win the MVP between Bryant and New Orleans Hornets point guard Chris Paul. The final voting was not as close as many had predicted it to be, as Bryant received 82 first place votes out of a possible 116.

In all fairness, if you look at the bottom line, it was not even supposed to be close. Chris Paul has been amazing this season, but his Hornets finished second to Bryant’s Lakers in the Western Conference. Paul had the benefit of finally having all of his team-mates for the majority of the season, whilst Bryant had to man a ship that lost key players to injuries for relatively long stretches.

Bryant had to make do with their top low post player Andrew Bynum and their top defender off the bench, Trevor Ariza going out after just half a season. Sure, he received help in the form of a gift-wrapped Pau Gasol from Memphis (to this day I still don’t believe the Lakers managed to pull off that steal) only to lose Gasol to injury in a key stretch when they were battling for home court advantage.