Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose are the most talented, but homely couple of NBA winners in recent memory.

If they have faces only a mother can love, then the millions of dollars and fame of Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in 2011, respectively, shall make more motherly love come their way. They no longer need a deodorant.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and their awards are not for pretty faces, obviously. They won because of the magnificence of their athletic prowess. Their bodies are dream machines beyond any model presently on the showroom floor.

Thank heavens the NBA is not a beauty contest. Of course, being a Rookie of the Year or Most Valuable Player is not a true indication of what a player has done or will do in the decade ahead.

After all, how hollow are both awards when you do not win a championship or use those talents to lead your team into contention?

Rose of Chicago may be a prickly choice indeed. He seems to have Destiny’s Child written on his pinky, rather more than what Dwayne Wade can muster out of hand from all those commercials with Charles Barkley and, certainly more than what Dwight Howard could do with his perpetual smiling personality.

With contending teams of the season biting the dust in the playoffs, the chances grow more likely that Derrick Rose may feel the warmth of true love: championship immortality. It will make him more beautiful than a princess.

Blake already has an edge over the MVP by leaping toad-like over a KIA. There will be no shortage of kissers to try to change him into a prince.

Each young winner, Blake and Derrick, could likely pose in Speedos and not win more fans than they have now.

What’s left is always a movie career, or at least the auditions of commercial endorsement. Leading-man roles are out, but action heroes in movies need only to shoot blanks convincingly.

Derrick has an insider friendship with the President of the United States, his biggest groupie from Chicago. It leaves Blake with Pekoe leaves in the bottom of the cup of Tea Party politicians.

Down the road, Blake may use a “get out of jail free card,” moving on to a championship franchise, a la LeBron. Who knows? One day he may be Derrick’s teammate.

Let’s feel some sympathy for these winners. After all, they have not been blessed with the looks of Tom Brady or Alex Rodriguez, but that beauty is a curse because the mirror laughs back eventually when you kiss it.

We know that true beauty always lurks behind the beast.

We are happy for Blake and Derrick because they are nice young men we wouldn’t mind sitting next to on a cross-country plane ride, even if they do take up all the leg room.