Durant, Rose Are the Future, LeBron and Dirk Are the Present

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I fully expect to see the day when Kevin Durant(notes) hoists an NBA Finals MVP trophy after leading his team to an NBA championship.

Ditto for Derrick Rose(notes).

Heck, the way free agency works now, they might even team up to snag a title someday.

But that's down the road, in the future.

 The present belongs to Dirk Nowitzki(notes) and LeBron James(notes), and I fully expect one of them to be hoisting the NBA Finals MVP trophy in the first half of June.

Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks have already secured a trip to the Finals, with a 4-1 victory over Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder, and James and the Miami Heat are one win away from punching their own ticket to the Finals series.

Miami owns a 3-1 lead over Rose and the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals, with Game 5 set for Thursday, May 26 at 8:30 p.m. EDT (televised on TNT).

It won't surprise me if that series goes to a Game 6, but I don't see the Heat losing it.
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Rose and Durant will get their time, though. These guys are supreme talents who have plenty of time to develop and completely take over the NBA. We've seen what each guy can do, but we've also seen that each is just not quite there yet.

They will be.

For Durant, a big part of the puzzle is developing a little bit of that superstar ego on offense. That "give me the ball" mentality. And he'll need to somehow wrest it away from shoot-first point guard Russell Westbrook(notes), who has a whole bunch of developing to do, himself.

I love Durant's unselfish style of play, but at times, he needs to get selfish and take over games. He needs to demand the ball, and be the guy who wins it or loses it. He needs to develop the type of confidence that Nowtizki has been displaying throughout the postseason.

He will, likely sooner than later. He's an amazing talent.

For Rose, it's really just a matter of rising to the occasion. The 2010-11 NBA MVP struggled shooting the ball in the past couple of games, and in Game 4, he missed seven of his last eight attempts and had seven turnovers.
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He needs to be able to trust his teammates to score when his shot is off, and still find ways to create offense even if his jumper is failing him, leaning on that incredible ability to drive to the hoop, and dishing off if necessary.

These guys will figure out these issues. Frankly, I'd have been shocked if both of them had led their teams into the 2010-11 NBA Finals, given their youth and relative inexperience.

But the fact they've each done what they've done so earlier in their careers has me excited about what's to come … in the future.