Confused About Kobe

So, let me get this straight. Kobe spends all year playing the role of the biggest gunner in basketball since Chris Heiser on my 5th grade basketball team, and according to many, he is the MVP because without him doing so, the Lakers have no shot. Now in the playoffs, Kobe, if all of the experts are to be believed, deserves the series MVP because the Lakers are shockingly up 3 games to 1 on the favored Suns, and Kobe is the reason, because he has decided to score less (he is down more than ten points from his regular season average) and distribute more (he has something like 1.5 more assists per game, which hardly seems cause for hosannahs, but no matter). But aren't these things completely contradictry? If the Lakers are doing better against the Suns than their regular seaosn record would indicate, doesn't that tell us that Kobe's teammates all along were a whole lot better than advertised, and that his regular season was indicative of a guy who is utterly self-absorbed? Kobe's defenders cannot have it both ways. And it seems clear that the idea that Kobe's performance this season was so spectacular because without it the Lakers would be cooked is a farce. The fact is, the team is playing at its best with Kobe playing a diminished role. If this redounds to anyone's benefit, shouldn't it be to Phil Jackson's first, and then, I dunno, Kobe's overshadowed teammates second? I know that some people have established that it is in the NBA"s interest for Kobe to be prominently featured, but it seems to me that facts are facts.

(By the way -- we know that LaBron has truly made the big time, because on that game winning shot against the Wizards the other day he took four, and almost five steps. Had he travelled any more, a stewardess would have offered him peanuts mid-trip. the sequence went like this -- step, jump stop, step, step, another jumpstop, step, shot. LaBron took over that game, but Wizards fans, all seven of them, have a right to feel aggrieved.)