who will among Kobe and Dirk become the two time MVP within this year?

A week ago in this space, The Race looked at the impact on MVP candidates when a team has one superstar vs. two or more.

This week, the committee is reviewing NBA history for MVP winners who have two or more such trophies.
Maybe this is the NBA's version of baseball's "first-ballot Hall of Famers" cutoff to differentiate its elite of the elite at Cooperstown. The Race will just lay out some numbers and let you form your own opinions about past MVP winners -- and the three guys on this week's list who have a chance to move up from one-timer status.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, of course, is the all-time MVP leader with six honors over his remarkable career. Bill Russell and Michael Jordan collected five each and Wilt Chamberlain was honored with four (though he curiously missed in 1961-62 after averaging his Herculean 50.4 ppg). That means four players have accounted for 20 of the 54 MVP awards since the modern version was created in 1955-56.

Three more players -- Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Moses Malone -- each won three MVP awards. And four guys -- fittingly, three of the greatest power forwards in league history -- won two each: Bob Pettit, Karl Malone, Tim Duncan and playmaker Steve Nash. So that ups the "hogging" stats to 37 trophies spread around to just 11 players.

That leaves 17 one-and-done MVP winners, which is a far greater honor than that characterization makes it sound. The list of names still is a Who's Who and, literally, a timeline fit for Springfield, Mass.: Bob Cousy, Oscar Robertson, Wes Unseld, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, Bob McAdoo, Bill Walton, Julius Erving, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

An interesting sub-plot to The Race this season, then, is whether any of the three guys on this week's list -- James, Bryant and Nowitzki -- can boost himself into an even more special club by claiming his second Maurice Podoloff trophy. That would make it 38 out of 55 by just a dozen players. Stay tuned and keep counting.