ANY VALUE IN CASTING EARLY VOTES?

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

LOS ANGELES - Are we sure this MVP race is over?

Ballots for the Most Valuable Player award have been cast already, based on the NBA regular season. The winner won't be announced for a while, probably after the first playoff round. Of course, that doesn't stop newshounds from sniffing around for the results.

The word is that Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns will be named MVP for the second season in a row, with Kobe Bryant of the Lakers somewhere in a group of runners-up with LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki and Chauncey Billups.

Where are these secrets guarded anyway, the White House?

The argument for Nash, the league's assists leader, over Bryant, its scoring leader, is that Nash does more of that making-his-team-better stuff that purists love.

But here's the thing: What if Bryant's team beats Nash's here in the first round of the playoffs, where the Lakers beat the Suns 99-92 at Staples Center on Friday night to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven-game series?

"Too late!" Mike D'Antoni, the Phoenix coach, said before the game with a grin.

Seriously, couldn't we have a Reggie Bush-Vince Young situation on our hands, where Bush earned the Heisman Trophy during the season and Young left his supporters feeling vindicated in the Rose Bowl?

"You always have a healthy discussion whether it's Kobe or Chauncey Billups or Steve or LeBron James - you can go right down the list," D'Antoni said.

"I think it's a great discussion, and nobody ever really knows. They're all super-important (players), and the only way you'd ever really know is if (everybody) traded places.

"Is Steve deserving? Oh, yeah. Is Kobe? Absolutely. I happen to like my guy."

If you wonder what it's worth, raising doubts about the validity of an election, I suppose you could ask Al Gore.

Still, there's the official result, and there's the court of public opinion.

Suns vs. Lakers, Nash vs. Kobe, is being played for that jury.

"I think the whole playoffs, people's opinions will be affected," said Phil Jackson, the Lakers' coach, whose players have won five MVPs, Michael Jordan four and Shaquille O'Neal one. "If LeBron James has a triple-double, you know, all those things."

It wouldn't be the first time. But it would be one of the more dramatic examples of the playoffs providing ammunition for the bitter complaints of fans of a losing Most Valuable Player candidate.

You have to go back to 1979 to find the last time an MVP was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. That was Moses Malone, then of the Houston Rockets, who were bounced by the Atlanta Hawks. There were no big award candidates on the Hawks, though.

Since then, eight MVPs were knocked out of the playoffs in later roundsby teams featuring players who received at least one first-place vote that year. Three MVPs got a playoff comeuppance against a voting runner-up: Julius Erving, whose Philadelphia 76ers were beaten by Larry Bird's Boston Celtics in the 1981 conference finals; Bird, whose Celtics were beaten by Magic Johnson's Lakers in the 1985 Finals, and Karl Malone, whose Utah Jazz was beaten by Jordan's Chicago Bulls in the 1997 NBA Finals.

Also, there were Charles Barkley's Suns losing to Jordan's Bulls in 1993, David Robinson's San Antonio Spurs losing to Hakeem Olajuwon's Rockets in 1995, Allen Iverson's 76ers losing to Shaq's Lakers in 2001, and Tim Duncan's Spurs losing to Shaq's and Kobe's Lakers in 2002.

Oh, and - so, this explains the deja vu - there was Nash's Suns falling to Duncan's Spurs in last season's conference finals.

What this could become, if the Lakers knocked off the Suns, is the first time in a long time that the MVP found himself discredited before his MVPship is even announced.

In Phoenix, the Suns had won game 1, Nash with 20 points and 10 assists, Bryant 22 points on 7 for 21 shooting, and the Lakers won game 2, Bryant with 29 and 10 rebounds, Nash with 29 and 9 assists.

And so it went. Two Most Valuable Players doing their mostest to win. The ballots may be in, but history's verdict hinges on this series.