Kobe Bryant will win his first MVP award this week.

But does he deserve it?

Certainly, Bryant added yet another great season to his brilliant career. Amidst changing personnel and an uber-competitive Western Conference, he led Los Angeles to a No. 1 playoff seed and has them in good position to grab their first championship since 2002. On many nights, he was the most dominant player on the court and in all of basketball — his consistency was nearly unparalleled.

All this is well and good, but was he the best or most valuable player in the league this year? That is a point of contention.

There were four main candidates for MVP: Bryant, New Orleans’ Chris Paul, Boston’s Kevin Garnett and Cleveland’s LeBron James.

When Garnett was traded to Boston last year, he instantly helped turn the Celtics into an Eastern Conference powerhouse. But, unlike his previous seasons in Minnesota, he wasn’t the only force on the team: Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, two stars in their own right, helped form a dominant Boston troika that was on par with any other trio in the league. While he is, perhaps, the premier inside player in the NBA, Garnett’s value was as a part of this group, not as an individual.

The story of King James is the opposite. He carried his team more than any other candidate did. The Cavaliers had only one other consistent contributor: Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Otherwise, it was James and James alone who propelled Cleveland into the playoffs. But the East was terribly weak this year, and the Cavaliers were mightily unimpressive — they wouldn’t have sniffed the playoffs if they had been in the West. It is generally taboo to award the MVP to players on mediocre teams, and, even with James’s laudable individual work, the Cavs were just that.

That brings us to Paul, Bryant’s presumptive runner-up. Simply put, Paul turned in one of the best seasons ever by a guard. He led the league in assists and steals while also adding over 21 points of scoring per game. His Player Efficiency Rating — a complex but accurate statistic developed to show a player’s per minute performance — was the best in league history for anyone not named Michael Jordan.

He overtook two-time MVP Steve Nash as the league’s best point guard, a distinction he won’t likely relinquish for the next decade. And, despite a plethora of commentators saying that the Hornets couldn’t withstand an intense stretch run, he kept New Orleans in top position in the West into April, with one otherworldly performance after another. The Hornets ultimately took the No. 2 seed in the West, right behind the Lakers.

As the season progressed, Garnett and James took a back seat to the two frontrunners. Frankly, all four candidates are worthy, and no choice could be categorized as wrong — especially in the case of Bryant v. Paul.

If I had a vote (note to editors: get on that) it’d go to Paul. As an effective floor general, Paul made all of his teammates better. David West is a very good forward, but, without Paul, he wouldn’t have approached the nearly 21 points and 9 rebounds a game he averaged. The same goes for Tyson Chandler, Peja Stojakovic and the rest of the Hornets.

The knock on Paul is that his surrounding talent was better than Bryant’s, and thus his individual value is diminished, but that’s misleading: Bryant had a constant low-post presence from Andrew Bynum and then Pau Gasol. Bynum was developing into a star beneath the basket before his mid-January season-ending injury; Gasol, already a premier big man who came over from Memphis in a trade in early February, replaced him. Kobe was the superstar, but, for the first time since Shaq left, he had another star to complement him. Los Angeles also had Lamar Odom and Derek Fisher, both fine contributors, as well as a slew of role players who did their part to help L.A.’s cause.

The most flawed reasoning I’ve seen is that Kobe was simply “owed” an MVP. There were times in the past (namely, the 2005-2006 season) when many believed that he was robbed of the award. As a result, the voters decided to make it up to him.

On top of that, many believe that Paul has yet to “pay his dues” in the league — in other words, the electorate does not generally award the MVP to young players. The first idea isn’t exactly unprecedented: Karl Malone won the MVP award in 1996-1997 over a more-qualified Jordan because, many believed, he was “due.” But historical examples can’t make this argument any less legitimate. Give the MVP to the player who deserves it based on his play that year, not because of his cumulative work and past events. To do otherwise is to insult both candidates and the award itself.

The race was so close that you could flip a coin to award the MVP this year. Paul is my choice, but I respect and understand the decision of those who went with Bryant. I just hope they chose him for the right reasons.

Wyndam Makowsky is a freshman whose ballot for the NBA MVP is surely in the mail. Honestly. Ask him if he’s received it yet at makowsky@

stanford.edu.