NEW YORK -- Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard played the race card last week and, despite the fact there was no one else sitting at his table, he couldn't resist dealing from the bottom of a deck obviously not near full.

"I, too, am tired of seeing racism thrown like a Molotov cocktail into discussions where racism doesn't exist," wrote the newspaper's incendiary tool while concocting, lighting and throwing a Molotov cocktail at an NBA media opinion poll (127-strong) that awarded this season's MVP to Steve Nash over runnerup Shaquille O'Neal by the scantest of margins.

"How much of this has to do with race?" Le Batard pathetically pondered.