With the season winding down — and with the Knicks making a mess of their lottery chances — let’s look at another situation going awry: the Most Valuable Player debate. In my mind, the MVP debate is only close because people are confused as to what “most valuable player” really means.

Some folks seem to believe that the award should go to a perennially great player who has never won the award before (such as Kobe Bryant). Others seem to believe that it should go to a future Hall of Famer most closely associated with the best turnaround from losing to winning in league history (such as Kevin Garnett). And a rapidly growing multitude believes that it should go to a player most responsible for taking a team from the doldrums to the elite (such as Chris Paul).

Bryant, Garnett, and Paul all have interesting Most Valuable Player award candidacies. But none of them can match the performance of LeBron James. James is scoring, assisting, and rebounding at tremendous rates. His overall production is far superior to any of the other players in the conversation.

James hasn’t had any games to rival the 48-point performance he dropped on Detroit in Game 5 of last year’s NBA Eastern Conference Finals, a game in which he scored 29 of his team’s last 30 points (I would say his 50 against the Knicks at the Garden comes close, but consider the opposition.) But the King James version of basketball this season has been frighteningly good, if not incredible. He is averaging 30.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 7.3 assists per game, while shooting 48.2% (that’s 3% higher than the league average). Or put another way, James has scored or assisted in 42.7% of the 7,559 points that his Cavaliers have scored this season. In addition, he has just shy of one-sixth of the Cavs’ 3,468 rebounds. And did I mention that he missed six games with a hand injury?

LeBron may be putting up numbers comparable to the great early seasons of Oscar Robertson, who averaged a triple-double in 1961–62, and nearly did so in the seasons that preceded and followed that one. While James’s 7.3 assists and 8.2 boards per game are remarkable figures, they don’t seem to compare to Robertson until you consider a key extenuating factor: pace. Robertson’s Cincinnati Royals played a much faster tempo than today’s game. So, games had many more possessions per contest and higher scores — opportunities to bolster offensive statistics.

Turnovers were not tallied back then, so it’s hard to do an exact comparison, but the numbers are telling. In 1961-62, Cincinnati shot 45.2% from the floor, about the league average today, and scored an average of 123.1 points per game. Today’s NBA teams score an average of 100.3 points per game — which should give you a sense that that vintage film of the NBA in the ’60s is not artificially sped up or anything; They had 10–15 more possessions per 48 minutes than you will find in today’s game. Fast breaks were the norm, not the exception.

How does James compare with others in the MVP discussion? Let’s review James’s key numbers: 30.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, 7.3 assists, and 48.6% shooting. Kobe Bryant’s tally is 28.7 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists, and 46.1% shooting. Garnett’s tally is 19 points, 9.4 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 54.4% shooting. Paul is the only one who comes close. His tally is 21.2 points, 4.0 rebounds, 11.5 assists, and 48.9% shooting. Paul gets a lot of credit for New Orleans’ rise, but there are several factors involved in the Hornets’ move to the NBA elite. Forward Peja Stojakovic is healthy. He missed 69 games last year; he’s missed only five this season. Center Tyson Chandler has improved substantially, and swingmen Bonzi Wells and Morris Peterson have combined to improve the Hornets’ bench. Paul has been wonderful, but he’s not getting credit for his exceptional numbers. He’s getting credit for the impressive rise of his team. Paul deserves some of the accolades, but not all of them.

There are two reasons that James fails to get the credit he deserves. For one, the Cavaliers are a mediocre team. But that is merely proof that basketball is a team game. Michael Jordan played on a mediocre team too until he was joined by another Hall of Fame caliber player, a leading rebounder, and a Hall of Fame coach. James has nothing like that among his teammates.

There is also a bit of a backlash against James. Since he was a teenager, all basketball fans have suffered through a tremendous amount of hype telling us how good James is. The funny thing is, he really is as good as advertised (how often does that happen?). But the natural resistance to press overkill is blinding us to the greatness of his play.

We’d better catch up. James is only 23. Few athletes peak at that age. LeBron is already playing at a level for the ages and he’s likely to get even better. He deserves the MVP this season, but even if he doesn’t get it, he will almost certainly win several soon.

mjohnson@nysun.com