It seems like the best way to improve your chances to winning the MVP is to get hurt, miss a few games and have your team struggle. That seems to be the case, at least, for the Steve Nash for MVP talk. He missed a few games recently and his team tanked it. That has made a lot of people on the internet say that it proves how good Nash really is and how deserving he is of his third-straight MVP award.

The problem I have with this line of thinking is that you are rewarding a player for his not playing. Missing games should not improve your chances of getting an award for playing basketball. If anything, getting hurt should hurt your case. Playing games should be the only criteria for the MVP. I know one of the arguments for who the MVP should be is to argue how worse a team is if he is not playing. But that just doesn’t make sense when you look at it closely. Like I’ve said, you should not reward a player for missing games.

The only player that I think deserves to be in the conversation of who the MVP is this year other than Dirk Nowitzki is Tracy McGrady. What is happening with the Rockets is exactly the opposite of what Steve Nash and the Suns went through. McGrady is carrying his team without its second best player. That’s MVP-like dominance. But I hear very little talk about T-Mac for MVP, probably because his team is only the 4th or 5th best team.

So, Dirk. If you really want to win MVP this year, here is what you should do. Get a few more games ahead of the Suns. Come down with a “sore knee” that forces you to sit out 3-4 games down the stretch. Finally, convince your teammates to tank it when you’re out. That will get you the MVP. I guarantee it.