How the fans of the worst MVP in NBA history looked at me when I said Brunson will win MVP this year https://t.co/4sMLGvCT9d https://t.co/laj8u9IT3o

Robert 🇫🇷 had never been to Poland 🇵🇱. That did not prevent him from knowing the country very well. It was a grey, poor, vaguely Soviet country, somewhere between Germany and Russia. The roads were probably terrible, the buildings dilapidated, and the people undoubtedly very grateful to Western Europe for having financed their escape from communism. Robert had never quite put it into words. He didn't need to. It was simply the natural order of things: France was rich, Poland was poor, and money flowed from the former to the latter. Robert worked for a major French company specialising in energy infrastructure. His employer sent him to Poland for a few months to help modernise a district heating network. He landed in Warsaw with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had come to bring civilisation without being so impolite as to say it. The first surprise was the airport. It was new. Or at least it looked new. Clean, quiet, efficient. Robert got into a taxi and waited for the real Poland to appear. It didn't. The roads were good. The petrol stations were modern. New buildings followed one another. The next day, he took a train. Same problem. Then he visited the city where the project was located. More renovated roads, new equipment, modern shops, restored buildings. Robert quickly found the explanation. — EU funds. He said it with the relief of a man who had just restored the universe to its proper order. And indeed, the plaques were everywhere: Co-financed by the European Union. There. Everything made sense. The Poles had built all this with French and German money. A few weeks later, Robert began examining the accounts of the project he was working on. That was when the real trouble started... Part of the engineering was being billed by his own French company. Some of the equipment came from Western Europe. There were maintenance contracts, technical services, licensing agreements and consultancy fees. Elsewhere in the economy, he found the same pattern: French, German, Dutch and Italian corporations, banks, insurers, manufacturers and retailers. They had invested in Poland because they were making money there. And the profits certainly didn't disappear at the Polish border. Some flowed back to their parent companies in the form of dividends and other intra-group payments. Robert suddenly had a deeply uncomfortable thought. What if nobody had been giving anybody anything for free? Western Europe had opened its markets and helped finance Eastern Europe's economic development. But Western companies had also obtained something enormous in return: access to new markets, profitable investments, contracts, customers and dividends. European funds were actually repaid to Western Europe... with a profit! Poland had gained infrastructure and capital. The West had gained a market. It wasn't charity. It was a transaction. At one point, Robert was having lunch near the construction site when a Polish engineer pointed towards a recently completed installation. — That's another thing we got thanks to EU money. Robert burst out laughing and put down his fork. — Oh, stop it with your free money! The Pole looked at him in surprise. — Excuse me? — Look who's building your infrastructure! Me! Look at my badge! I work for a French company. We're billing this project. Western companies are supplying the equipment. We have contracts here because you opened your market. Do you seriously think Paris, Berlin and Brussels sent you billions out of pure Christian charity? From that moment on, something began to malfunction in his head. He started comparing things. He opened the French news. Public debt and enormous public spending that built nothing. Deficits. Hospitals in difficulty. Ageing infrastructure. Public services under strain. Periodic riots. And always that absolutely unshakable French conviction that France belonged to the group of countries entitled to lecture everyone else. Something no longer added up... The most disturbing difference wasn't even economic. It was public order. He went out in the evenings. He watched families in the streets, people on public transport, the squares, women walking home alone, the shops, the parks. Of course, he still noticed flaws, absurdities and things that didn't work properly. Poland had not miraculously become perfect. But Robert was beginning to experience a feeling far more uncomfortable than admiration. He had the impression that this country was moving forward while his own was wearing itself out. A few months later, his assignment came to an end. Robert boarded a plane to Paris. As the aircraft landed, he looked through the window with the genuine pleasure of coming home. Then came the airport, the journey into the city, the tired infrastructure, the familiar dysfunctions, the everyday incivilities he had once stopped noticing because they had simply become part of the scenery. A few months earlier, he had boarded a plane to work in a poor country financed by his rich country. Now he was returning with a thought he would have found ridiculous before his departure. For the first time in his life, Robert had the strange feeling that he was arriving in the poor country.

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2026-27 NBA award predictions: MVP: Cade Cunningham DPOY: Ausar Thompson ROTY: Ebuka Okorie 6MOY: Ebuka Okorie MIP: Ausar Thompson COTY: J.B. Bickerstaff CPOTY: Cade Cunningham ECF MVP: Cade Cunningham WCF MVP: Who cares Finals MVP: Cade Cunningham https://t.co/Bj1XAq4zRk

If Shai wins his THIRD straight MVP this season, where are we ranking him all time? 👀 Does an MVP three-peat put him in the top 10? https://t.co/1iC8dmiPp6