Yes, I am a Lakers fan.

And I believe I speak for all Lakers fans when I say that LeBron James may win the MVP, but it’s still Kobe Bryant’s year.

Before this escalates into an argument about my own biases or who has the team with the most bandwagon fans (the Lakers, admittedly, win that battle by a margin bigger than the gap in Chicago Bulls forward Joakim Noah’s teeth), consider the facts:

After ending their regular season with a league-leading 66-17 record and sweeping the eighth-seeded Pistons in the first round, James’s Cleveland Cavaliers are the league’s best bet to beat the Lakers in the finals. However, the Lakers beat them twice during the regular season – once without center Andrew Bynum, who averaged 14 points and eight rebounds in 50 games. Say what you want about LeBron, but Bryant is still the best closer and hence the most Michael Jordan-esque player in the league. Out of 190 NBA players that Sports Illustrated polled in February, 76 percent of them would want Kobe to take the last shot. James earned just three percent of the vote.

What about the rest of the crowd? The Portland Trailblazers gave the Lakers the most trouble out of any of the playoff teams, but are down 3-1 to the Houston Rockets. The Denver Nuggets are my pick to meet the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, but guard Chauncey Billups and forwards Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin are neither as tall nor as athletic as Bryant, Bynum and 7-0[[ok]] forward Pau “Big Bird” Gasol.

No team can match with the Cavs in the East, mostly because LeBron James is the real-life rendition of that freakish beast of a player you created in NBA Live using cheat codes. That said, Cleveland might not have the depth they would need to beat the Lakers and win it all.

The final call: the Lakers over the Cavs in six.

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