Fantasy sports has a way of distorting people’s opinion about sport in real life, especially when it comes to judging a players potential or his chances of winning the MVP.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem normally, it certainly isn’t a problem in England or in Europe, but in America fantasy sports are huge and it plays a big part in American social sporting culture.

Fantasy football (soccer) isn’t the big deal that fantasy football (American football) is in America, any other fantasy sport for that matter.

Just compare the structure of the official Premier League fantasy to any of the NFL, NBA or MLB and you quickly understand that the American fantasy sports are built and structured to encourage competition between friends.

The draft system, the in depth statistics and statistical analysis as well as the different scoring categories force the participants to have an in depth knowledge of the players they are picking, hence the huge sections dedicated to fantasy sports on sites like ESPN and Yahoo.

Add a trade option, and you have a game that runs real-time with the actual sport where fans can battle it against each other, like managers do in real life. – The only difference here being that fantasy allows for owners to have an assortment of all sorts of all-stars, a luxury real life coaches do not have. –

This is why a game like Football Manager would never be popular on the other side of the Atlantic, they already have a game like that and they compete against real people.

But here is where the problem with fantasy sports lies. People become too reliant just on stats and forget to measure the intangibles that make the great players great.

Go into a pub in England and everyone in it will have some sort of opinion about why a team is struggling, who isn’t pulling their weight and so on, they do not care about fantasy it’s all eyes on the TV and the sport.

That gives them a better knowledge of the game and not the stats, but in America go to an NFL game and just look at how many people in the stands are on their Blackberry’s or Iphone’s looking at how their fantasy team is doing?

Fantasy does not measure the defence that forces a player to miss-play a pass or the offence that forces a team to change the way they play, that can only be measured by the human eye and it’s why journalists vote for awards like the MVP, although not all of them get it right.

LeBron James is by far and away the front runner for fantasy player of the year in the NBA, based on the Yahoo fantasy league, but for most of the season it has been Kobe Bryant who has been leading the race for the MVP, Kobe Ranks third in fantasy. James has been so dominant in fantasy this year he is more than 500 points ahead of his nearest challenger, any guesses who is second? Chris Bosh would be the answer to that and he hasn’t featured in the race since week one.

Dwyane Wade is fourth on the list and he too hasn’t featured in the race for a while and this is one of the major problems fantasy sports causes, good fantasy performance doesn’t necessarily equate to good real life performance.

There are only certain things stats can measure, the rest must be decided by human brain and ultimately when it comes down to it stats will never be able to replace the understanding a human being can possess for the game.

1- LeBron James, 29.4 PPG, 7.8 assists, 7.2 rebounds, .358 3pt%, 1.43 steals

Yes LeBron is averaging career highs in rebounds and assists – a full one assist above his average – but if Kobe wasn’t injured he would still be number one on the list. That said LeBron is arguably having his best year so he still is a worthy no.1

2- Kobe Bryant, 29.2, 4.6 assists, 5.4 rebounds, .315 3pt%, 1.89 steals

Kobe’s finger is bothering him and as a result his shot is not falling like it normally does. He had a season-low 12 against Milwaukee and had to leave the game against the San Antonio Spurs after suffering from back spasms. Is this the result of Kobe playing so many minutes and games in his career?

3- Steve Nash, 19.2 PPG, 11.3 assists, 3 rebounds, .441 3pt%, .945 FT%

Last five games? He hasn’t handed out fewer than 11 assists or scored fewer than 16 points. Add the fact that he is money from the three throw line and you get a candidate for MVP. If he can continue to lead the Suns like this for the rest of the season surely he should be MVP?

4- Kevin Durant, 28.8 PPG, 3 assists, 7 rebounds, .327 3pt%, 1.43 steals

Oklahoma are 21-16 and Kevin Durant is one of the main reasons for that record. Last five games he’s scored at least 25 and topped out at 40. Against the Knicks he scored 30 on 8-of-14 shooting and continues to learn how to play defence. If OKC  continue their winning record Durant could be MVP, he certainly is one for the future.

5- Carmelo Anthony, 29.8 PPG, 3.3 assists, 6.3 rebounds, .370 3pt%, 1.15 steals

Melo just returned after missing five games with a knee injury and scored 24 points helping the Nuggets beat the Timberwolves. Hopefully he can get back to his pre injury form where he was averaging 30PPG.

6- Dirk Nowitzki, 25 PPG, 2.5 assists, 8 rebounds, .394 3pt%, 1.28 blocks

After a slump following an injury Dirk is back and has scored over 22 points in his last five games. He scored 29 in a loss to the Utah Jazz but did lead the Mavs to a 112-103 win over the Spurs, scoring 26 and blocking 3 blocks.

7- Dwight Howard, 17.2 PPG, 1.6 assists, 13.2 rebounds, .610 FG%, 2.47 blocks

He might be the best defensive player in the league but he is not dominant in the post despite dropping 30 points on the Kings. What happened against the Hawks? He only had 8 shots and the whole game with 4 fouls in 23 minutes, not quite MVP form.

8- Tim Duncan, 20.1 PPG, 3.1 assists, 10.4 rebounds, .556 FG%, 1.88 blocks.

He has 25 points, 13 rebounds, four assists, two steals and four blocks against the Lakers, need I say more?