It has become an ongoing ritual. We have to have someone who is above the rest. We have to designate someone as the best player in the NBA. It may change by the month. It certainly changes by the year. Who cares?

	Shaq had a better season last year, but he's still a dominant center.

Kobe Bryant is now the undeniable Flavor of the Month. He is wowing everyone with his scoring, acrobatics and grit. I may be in the minority here, but I'm not ready to make that judgment based on two months, not to mention coronating a player whose team has regressed and whose only dramatically upgraded statistics are in shots taken and points scored.

I always thought the best player probably played for the best team and was, indisputably, the best player on that team. Sure, Kobe is a terrific talent, and he will be one of the two guards selected for the first team, All-NBA. No argument there. He probably will be thus for years to come.

But why the sudden insistence that he is, suddenly, without peer? You can make a case that he's not even the best player on his own team. (We know what Shaquille O'Neal thinks about that.) Which one would you want for your team, assuming you were starting from scratch and had both players in top condition? As former Celtic coach ML Carr said, "I averaged 19 a game in Detroit before I came to Boston. But once I got here, me and everyone else saw one thing: get the ball to Larry. We did it and now I have diamonds in my closet. Kobe had better understand that."

By the way, what happened to Shaq, anyway? Last year, he was the obvious selection as the top player in the game. It was an open and shut case; at least it was after we all recovered from the onslaught of Vinsanity. Were it not for one vote, Shaq would have been the first unanimous MVP selection in the history of the league. Sure, there was the obligatory slobbering over Kobe last season, particularly during the NBA Finals, but he was mainly seen as the ideal Sancho Panza to Shaq's Don Quixote. Kobe was not even on the All-NBA first team last season, you may recall.

Now, he's already eclipsed Shaq? And everyone else, including Chris Webber and Allen Iverson, who would be 1-2 or 2-1 in MVP voting if it were to beheld today? Sorry.

But, of course, there has to be someone and, preferably, it has to be someone new. Shaq, apparently, already has had his year in the sun. That's because he supplanted someone else -- Tim Duncan. The Spurs uber forward was clearly the best player in the league in 1999 (he got robbed of the MVP by Karl Malone) as he led San Antonio to the NBA title. Once again, the best player in the league happened to be on the best team.

	MORE ON DA BEST We have more coverage on the best players in the NBA than Tim Duncan. Ric Bucher from ESPN The Magazine hung out with Chris Webber, while Jeffrey Denberg discusses Allen Iverson. Check out the Best Player Index page to tell us your favorite and see all our features.

Prior to Duncan, we were Jordanized to the max, of course, to the point where we lost all sense of history or perspective. We not only decided Jordan was the game's best player, which he was. We also decided that he was the best of all-time, which is debatable.

If I'm not mistaken, Bill Russell merely revolutionized the game, won 11 championships in 13 years (and finished runner-up in one of the two he missed) and NEVER lost a seventh game or any winner-take-all affair in his professional career (11-0). You can add another 10 games like that during his college and Olympic career. The last time I checked, the game was about winning and there has never, ever, been a greater winner than Russell. But we latched onto Jordan like a vise, overlooking the fact that he won his titles in a league diluted by expansion and with an increasing number of players not ready for prime time.

Russell dominated the 1960s. No one dominated the 1970s, except, perhaps, John Travolta. Bird and Magic split the 1980s and Jordan had the 1990s.

Shaq is now the dominating player of his time. There should not be any argument there. Put all the players on the open market, poll the 29 general managers and see who wins. It took him awhile to "get it," as they like to say, but he clearly got it last year. Are we supposed to assume he took stupid pills over the summer? The one undeniable flaw in his game -- free-throw shooting -- was also an undeniable flaw last year and the year before that. No one seemed to care last year.

The one clear difference this year, however, is that Shaq's game has slipped for the simple reason that he isn't healthy. He already has missed a handful of games due to a foot injury and his troublesome abdomen is also kicking up again. That's not good news if you're a Lakers fan. Shaq only missed three games last season. He insisted, as did those who played with him in years prior, that the major difference in his game last year was not Phil Jackson's Zen or Kobe's game but his own, good health. OK, Jackson helped.

But what is Jackson to do now with his precocious pup and the Big Dog? Back in the 1980s, the Celtics knew who the man was and that never wavered even though Hall of Famers populated their frontcourt (the backcourt wasn't too shabby, either.) Kevin McHale improved every season, to the point in 1986 and 1987 when there was no surer two points in the NBA than McHale having the ball in the low post. But he and everyone else knew which straw stirred the drink and that straw was Larry Bird.

The Lakers knew similarly that Magic Johnson was the man. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was great, but he won as many titles in LA without Magic as I did. James Worthy and Byron Scott both benefited from Magic's largesse to the point where they became stars. Yet no one came to Pat Riley the year after winning a title and insisted that they had overtaken Magic as the man.

Back then, you could flip a coin between Bird and Magic, but, basically, neither one cared if they were deemed to be the best. They didn't care about titles or awards. All that mattered to them was to be the last man standing in June. That's all that should matter. In other words, get ready for the possibility of yet another Best Player in the Game in four months.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.