The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that a poll taken last week with 20 writers, 10 from the East and 10 from the West, had New Jersey?s Jason Kidd taking the MVP award on 10 ballots, Tim Duncan from San Antonio just behind him with 9 and Shaquille O?Neal registering one.

While hardly conclusive, it does show that this year?s MVP voting will be extremely close when 127 writers around the country cast their votes for real.  Each writer will be asked to give their preferences in a 5-4-3-2-1 format, 5 being the top score.  The results from the poll had Kidd finishing with 83 points, Duncan with 82, O'Neal with 66 and Orlando's Tracy McGrady fourth with 33 points.

"My case is, we're 24, 25 or 26 games better than last year," New Jersey coach Byron Scott said, naturally leading towards his star Jason Kidd.. "That's a big difference. We have a lot of the same players. The one major addition is Jason. I think that's argument enough. We weren't supposed to do anything. Going from 26-56 to 50-plus wins, I don't think there's a better argument."