With two days of games left to play, all 16 playoff teams have been determined. However, every seed is still up for grabs in the West and the dust won’t be completely settled on the left coast until all the games have been played.

Things are a lot less murky in the East. In fact, the playoff matchups are all set. Teams can do whatever they want to do to prepare for the postseason, but expect a lot of rest for big name players in the East.

A quick look at the first round pairings in the Eastern Conference:

1. Boston Celtics vs. 8. Atlanta Hawks
Celtics won season series 3-0
Last meeting: April 12 in Atlanta, Celtics won 99-89
What to expect: The Hawks are the definition of a team that is just happy to be here (for the first time since 1999) whereas the Celtics are built for a championship and possess the league’s best record. Anything less than a sweep by Boston would be surprising.

4. Cleveland Cavaliers vs. 5. Washington Wizards
Tied season series 2-2
Last meeting: March 13 in Washington, Wizards won 101-99
What to expect: These teams meet in the first round for the third straight season and for the third year, Cleveland has home court advantage. Can the Cavs beat the same opponent three years in a row? The Wizards don’t think so, according to Gilbert Arenas, who missed last year’s matchup with an injury. This should be the best first round series in the East, especially with a healthy Wizards roster ready to roll.

3. Orlando Magic vs. 6. Toronto Raptors
Magic won season series 2-1
Last meeting: March 4 in Orlando, Magic won 102-87
What to expect: The exciting duel here is between young all-stars Dwight Howard of Orlando and Chris Bosh of Toronto. One will earn his first trip to the second round, something Tracy McGrady never did in either city. In fact, Orlando hasn’t won a playoff series since 1996, their last season with Shaquille O’Neal. Toronto last won a playoff series in 2001.

2. Detroit Pistons vs. 7. Philadelphia 76ers
Tied season series 2-2
Last meeting: April 9 in Philadelphia, 76ers won 101-94
What to expect: The Sixers were the second-half story of the season in the East, rallying from a record of 23-30 at the all-star break. A win in their final game at Charlotte would draw them to 41-41. The Pistons have their sights set on bigger things, having been to at least the Eastern Conference Finals in each of the past five seasons. But Detroit split the regular season series with Philly and likely will have their hands full with this young, upstart Sixers team.

Click to read my article explaining how I came to name Kobe Bryant as the 2008 NBA MVP.

The NBA is a league built upon moments. Wilt Chamberlain posing with a scribbled ‘100’ on a piece of paper. Magic Johnson sweeping across the lane in the Boston Garden with his version of the sky hook. Michael Jordan holding his follow through after a game-clinching, picture perfect jumper in Utah.

Perhaps that is why it’s so hard for people to come to a consensus on Kobe Bryant as the 2008 NBA MVP. The Lakers have had so many non-basketball moments this season that it’s sometimes easy to forget they’ve won 56 games – far exceeding preseason expectations.

The season started in turmoil with Bryant’s trade demands. But management held firm and Bryant remained a Laker. And much to everyone’s surprisethe Los Angeles Lakers exuded the qualities of a cohesive team (and a good one to boot). Andrew Bynum developed into a double-double machine. Derek Fisher returned consistency to the point guard position and young reserves Jordan Farmar, Sasha Vujacic and Ronny Turiaf fueled one of the deepest, most productive benches in the NBA.

Suddenly, purple and gold moments were happening around Kobe and not simply because of him. It seems strange to speak of the improved impact of Bryant’s teammates in his MVP column, but isn’t that the main claim for those clamoring for Garnett and Paul? Well, Kobe’s team went from just two games over .500 last year to the top of the ultra-competitive Western Conference in 2008.

Amid all this team talk let’s not forget that Kobe has had his moments. There was the 18-foot jumper with less than five seconds left to secure a 123-121 overtime victory on the road in Seattle in the first game after Bynum’s inury, dropping 41 points to spoil Shaq’s debut with the Suns and shooting 15-for-15 at the free throw line in the second half and overtime in a March 2 victory against the Mavericks.

However, many of Kobe’s moments this year have been uncharacteristic of “The Black Mamba” nickname Bryant gave himself a few seasons ago. Without losing his killer instinct or poise in the clutch, Kobe has seemingly become less venomous, especially with his teammates. Watching Kobe yuk it up on the sidelines with teammates during a Lakers rout is a sight for sore eyes. He’s smiling, laughing and having fun. Basketball is a game, after all.

Make no mistake about it, though, Kobe’s numbers are still great. At 28.5 points per game, he’s number two in the league in scoring. He also leads his team in assists at 5.4 per game and is ninth in the NBA in steals at 1.85 per game. And let’ s not forget that since February he’s been doing this all with a torn ligament in his right pinkie finger. Still, this is not his best season statistically. Yet his body language shows that he has no problem sacrificing shots (down 500 from two years ago) for wins (up 14 from a year ago with one game left to play).

And perhaps nothing put a bigger smile on Kobe’s face than the Pau Gasol trade, which should only bolster Kobe’s case for MVP. The team was a half game out of first in the West when Bynum went down with injury. They lost their starting center for the rest of the season and, admittedly received a gift from Memphis. However, they plugged him into the lineup and kept on rolling in the loaded West. No one has a better record than the Lakers’ 19-11 mark against the other Western Conference playoff contenders.

A great team is better than the sum of its parts, and so is a great player. That is what Kobe is all about. He’s a great scorer, ballhandler, defender, crunch-time performer and – now more than ever – great leader. Among the current Lakers, only Derek Fisher has been in league as long as Bryant. Including the playoffs, he’ll have played more than 1,000 games played before the age of 30. And he’s now using that experience to help his teammates learn the intricacies of the game.

Kobe’s had more moments than most could ever dream of: winning the ’97 Dunk Contest, starting in the ’98 all-star game as a 19-year-old kid, scoring 81 points in a game. But three June moments stand out in his mind.

And all the little moments from this season are just stepping stones toward the one Kobe wants most of all – hoisting that NBA Finals trophy once again. In the mind of this MVP, there’s a reason why that defining MVP moment is hard to pinpoint – it hasn’t happened (yet).

Click to read my column about my choice for 2008 NBA MVP.

This year, more than any year I can remember, selecting the NBA’s Most Valuable Player seems like asking parents to choose their favorite child. Each child has its own unique characteristics that make him or her stand out. Same with each MVP candidate.

I wrote a column a month ago called “Fixing the NBA’s MVP Award,” but I’m still hearing commentators, analysts and fans basing their MVP pick on single criteria that simply doesn’t make sense. See rules 1-3 of the aforementioned column. You can’t reduce the MVP to one characteristic. Just like you couldn’t name “best child” based solely on their GPA or the amount of money they make.

My first step was to comb the 18 teams still in playoff contention with a week left to play in the season for any players they have that could be MVP candidates. You shouldn’t have to play on the best team in the league to win the MVP, but you shouldn’t be getting a top-10 lottery pick either. So I took at least one player from each team. A few teams had as many of three guys get the nod.

In alphabetical order, my starting pool of MVP candidates featured Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Caron Butler, Baron Davis, Tim Duncan, Monta Ellis, Kevin Garnett, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobli, Danny Granger, Richard Hamilton, Dwight Howard, Allen Iverson, Stephen Jackson, LeBron James, Antawn Jamison, Joe Johnson, Tracy McGrady, Andre Miller, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitski, Tony Parker, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce, Amare Stoudemire, David West and Deron Williams.

With the starting list drafted, the first challenge was to narrow the pool of 30 possible candidates to a reasonable number. Let’s say 10. An obvious qualification for league MVP is that a candidate must be the MVP of his own team. So the first necessary step was to eliminate second fiddle candidates. Cross off Paul Pierce in Boston, Richard Hamilton in Detroit, Caron Butler in Washington, David West in New Orleans, Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker in San Antonio, Pau Gasol in Los Angeles, Allen Iverson in Denver, Stephen Jackson and Monta Ellis in Golden State, Carlos Boozer in Utah and Amare Stoudemire in Phoenix.

It doesn’t matter that some of these players might outrank someone else still on the list. Did they have great seasons? Sure. Do they deserve All-NBA team consideration? Perhaps. But if you’re not a team MVP, you cannot be in consideration for the NBA MVP. You could make arguments for Boozer and Stoudemire over their respective teammates, Deron Williams and Steve Nash, but I am of the opinion that both power forwards are enhanced by playing with top notch point guards. Moving on.

The next step of elimination was separating the pretenders from the contenders. If a player’s team didn’t clinch a playoff spot by the final week of the season, he is not a top MVP candidate. That eliminated Danny Granger, Joe Johnson, Dirk Nowitski, Carmelo Anthony and Baron Davis from the discussion. Better luck next year.

I still needed to make a few cuts to get me down from 13. This is where some of that subjectivity came into play. It’s something I call the “double-take test.” If you opened up the newspaper tomorrow and the headline read (insert name here) wins MVP Award, would you immediately do a double-take? If so, cross his name off the potential candidates list. Antawn Jamison, Andre Miller, Chris Bosh – that means you guys.

That left me with a nice round number of 10 candidates for MVP: Chauncey Billups, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Tracy McGrady, Steve Nash, Chris Paul and Deron Williams. And it just so happens that these 10 players represent the top four teams in the East and the top six in the West. That seemed about right.

But getting it down to 10 was the easy part. Narrowing that list of finalists to one winner was the real challenge.

There is no universal definition of what the Most Valuable Player is. Therefore, my solution for selecting an MVP takes into account a number of variables, including some objective and subjective tools of measurement. Essentially, I created a 10-question MVP survey.

Each question represented an MVP-worthy quality. For each question I scored each of the 10 finalists between 1 and 10 with 10 being the most representative of that particular quality. The questions are as follows:

Q1. The candidates are playing a game against one another. Who’s your first pick?
Q2. Which player causes the most matchup problems?
Q3. Which player’s NBA team would suffer the most in his absence?
Q4. Who is the best all-around player?
Q5. Who would you want taking a game-winning shot?
Q6. Who would you want on the line for free throws to ice the game?
Q7. Which player has had the most positive impact on his teammates?
Q8. If you needed one defensive stop, who would you want playing defense?
Q9. Who’s had the best statistical season?
Q10. Which player’s team had the best season?

Below is my 2008 NBA MVP scorecard. (Click image for full size)

The debate, of course, is in the answering of the questions and the rating of players on a 1-10 scale. Minds are going to disagree about where a player is rated in certain categories. But take a look at the final results. The top four totals belong to Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, LeBron James and Kevin Garnett, which happen to be the same names that have been thrown around for MVP all season. The difference is that my formula, while imperfect, at least takes several questions into consideration. I’m not a single-issue voter when it comes to the NBA MVP Award and I don’t think anyone should be.

If all the NBA MVP voters used my method of voting and the league incorporated the idea from my previous column to make “all the NBA MVP voters” include players, coaches and media members, I think the MVP Award would be a true assessment of the number one player in the game that season. And for me, that MVP would be Kobe Bryant.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a real vote in the MVP balloting. But for me the nod goes to Kobe, who measures up against the competition. He ranked atop the list for four categories. No one else won more than one category. Garnett, James and Paul all had fantastic seasons, but Bryant deserves the award most of all.

The seedings in the Western Conference get jostled almost daily. With more than two weeks remaining, a glance at the standings today reveals that nine teams are still very much in play for any of the available eight playoff spots. And those “If the playoffs started today…” graphics are essentially useless until the matchups are actually set in stone, which likely won’t be until the final games end on April 16.

Until then, here’s a look at how the team’s have fared against all eight potential playoff opponents.

Green/blue in the column indicates a series win. Orange/red indicates a series loss. Everything else is either a 2-2 split or has games left to be played.

A quick glance at the chart gives you some idea of which team doesn’t want to face a particular team in the playoffs. Only the Hornets, currently in first place, have not lost a season series to any of their potential playoff competition, though Utah leads them 2-1.

Phoenix, however, has yet to win the season series against any Western playoff foe and has already lost the season series with the Lakers, Hornets and Spurs.

The race for the Western Conference playoffs is likely going to go right down to the final day of the schedule, April 16, when 8 of the 9 teams vying for a spot will be in action. (The Lakers’ season wraps up one night earlier.)

With each team having between 10 and 12 games left on their respective schedules, I just had to peak ahead. Below, I dare to prognosticate how they’ll finish based on their remaining schedules.

Seed. Team, Projected W-L

1. San Antonio Spurs, 57-25
After losing 6 of 7 earlier this month, it’s hard to believe the Spurs could finish with the best record in the West, but they’re only 1 game back of the number one spot today, 6 of their final 10 are at home, and only two of their road games are against fellow Western playoff contenders.

2. New Orleans Hornets, 56-26
The Hornets are quietly buzzing along with the best record in the West as of today. However, the scheduling gods aren’t smiling down on them. They’re currently on a 6-game road trip that includes Boston and Orlando. All in all, 8 of their final 12 games are on the road. Throw in home dates with Golden State and Utah, and the Hornets may have the toughest schedule the rest of the way in the West.

3. Los Angeles Lakers, 56-26
If the Lakers lose the April 11 date with New Orleans, the Hornets will own the season series tiebreaker. A Lakers win would split the season series 2-2 and the next tiebreaker would be conference winning percentage, which is currently up in the air. The Lakers have 7 of their final 10 games at home, 8 if you include the “road game” at the Clippers in Staples Center. With all three games against West contenders at home, the Lakers would be in position to secure the top seed if it weren’t for their myriad of injuries.

4. Utah Jazz, 54-28
By virtue of winning the Northwest Division, the Jazz would be assured one of the top four seeds. However, home court advantage in the first round still goes to the team with the better overall winning percentage. That matters as much to Utah as anyone in the West. Utah is one of only two Western playoff contenders with a losing record on the road. With road games against New Orleans, Dallas and San Antonio down the stretch, the Jazz are likely to start the postseason on the road.

5. Houston Rockets, 55-27
Houston plays just 3 of its final 10 games at home. The good news is that only 3 of their 7 road games are against Western playoff contenders. The bad news is that they play a back-to-back at Denver and at Utah in the final week of the season. A win this Sunday at San Antonio would be huge as they kick off a 5-game road trip. A Rockets-Jazz rematch of last year’s first round 7-game series would be fantastic.

6. Phoenix Suns, 54-28
Back-to-back losses to beasts of the East, Detroit and Boston, have to have Suns fans wondering about their championship potential. Their closing schedule features 6 road games and 5 home games. A back-to-back this Friday and Saturday against Philadelphia and New Jersey, two Eastern Conference teams fighting for playoff positioning, should not be overlooked before Phoenix closes the season with its final 9 games against teams from the West.

My predictions had the Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors finishing the season deadlocked at 50-32, which means I had to consult the rules for a three-team tiebreaker. They are as follows:

1. Best head-to-head winning percentage among all teams tied
2. Highest winning percentage within division (if teams are in the same division
3. Highest winning percentage in conference games
4. Highest winning percentage against playoff teams in own conference
5. Highest point differential between points scored and points allowed

Talk about potential drama. Dallas (sans Dirk Nowitski) travels to Denver tonight. The teams split their first two games. The Nuggets also have two games remaining with Golden State (1 home, 1 away) after splitting the first two games against the Warriors. Dallas currently leads Golden State 2-0, but the Mavs and Warriors also have two games remaining.

For the record:

• Dallas is 3-1 against Denver and Golden State with 3 games remaining (1 home).
• Denver is 2-2 against Dallas and Golden State with 3 games remaining (2 home).
• Golden State is 1-3 against Dallas and Denver with 4 games remaining (2 home).

Depending on your perspective, the Warriors are in the best or worst position. They currently have the worst head-to-head winning percentage among all teams tied, however four of their final 12 games of the season are against their direct competition. If they sweep Dallas and Denver, they’re almost surely going to be in. Anything short of that, and it’s anybody’s guess.

My guess? Golden State gets 2 from a Dirk-less Mavs team and splits with Denver, making them 4-4 in the three-way head-to-head series. And Denver wins tonight against Dallas, which puts the Mavs at 3-4 and the Nuggets at 4-3.

That would mean Denver gets seventh slot, Golden State slips in at number eight and the Mavericks would be the odd team out. Shocking to imagine the number one seed from the West last year could miss the postseason after adding Jason Kidd, but it’s entirely possible in the West this year.