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Golden State Warriors: Stephen Curry Will Be The NBA’s First Unanimous MVP

By Clevis Murray

Feb 27, 2016; Oklahoma City, OK, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) reacts after hitting the game winning shot against the Oklahoma City Thunder in overtime at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 27, 2016; Oklahoma City, OK, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) reacts after hitting the game winning shot against the Oklahoma City Thunder in overtime at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports /
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Golden State Warriors star Stephen Cury should be the NBA’s first unanimous MVP award winner, but, considering the history of the award, will he be?

Memories are made everyday. Long lasting fixtures in time are made by greats who are legends at their craft. Wardell Stephen Curry is hypnotizing the basketball world with his daily greatness on the court and humor off of it.

Every game he plays he’s doing something otherworldly, whether he’s making an opponent stumble or hitting a shot that is unequivocally unexplainable on the standard basis of human comprehension making it seem oh so “Stephortless.”

The basketball world thought the 2014-15 MVP season for Curry would be his peak year. Well guess what, we were all wrong.

It’s rare players actually improve following their MVP season, but of course, “The Stephortless One” is the anomaly. Curry’s improved just about every single major statistical category he could over the course of the 2015-16 season.

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 8.05.01 PM
Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 8.05.01 PM /

From viewing the numbers, Curry has increased everything except his assists which actually decreased from 7.7 last season to 6.6 this season. The main reason why his assists have decreased is because of the emergence of his All-Star counterpart Draymond Green establishing himself as the most versatile player in the league as being a daily triple-double threat.

Green’s assists have elevated from 3.7 last year to 7.4 now.

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Curry’s stat increase will certainly help media members decide his locked-up unanimous 2015-16 NBA MVP award, along with his team has played with the playoffs starting next month. Curry’s team, incase you didn’t know, the Golden State Warriors, are currently 66-7 which is the best 73-game stretch in league history.

Yes, you read that correctly. Curry should be coronated as the first unanimous NBA MVP in league history. Such an honor almost happened back in 2012-13 when LeBron James, who was then a member of the Miami Heat, received 120 of a possible 121 first-place votes to win the award. The one person to keep history from occurring just a few short seasons ago was Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe — who is a fantastic writer by the way.

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Washburn had voted for New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony with his first-place vote and gave LeBron a second-place vote. The incident caused an uproar, with Washburn being questioned by multiple media personalities, but later died down as time progressed.

That instance with James getting every vote but one is also akin to Shaquille O’Neal‘s back in 1999-00 when he was with the Lakers, as he received every first-place vote but one which was sent to Sixers guard Allen Iverson at the time by CNN/SI’s Fred Hickman.

From those two examples, there’s usually one voter who thinks otherwise of making history. The only other player who’s been playing at an MVP-caliber level this season, and could join Anthony and Iverson at respectively earning their own one or two first-place votes is Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

So many arguments can be made as to why Curry should become a unanimous MVP…put everything together and you understand why he’s the only legitimate choice for MVP, but again could still be penalized

Like Curry, Westbrook is also having a historic season. Westbrook has cemented himself as one of most versatile, aggressive and no-ish giving players in the league.

This season, Westbrook is putting up numbers that haven’t been averaged since Oscar Robertson (’65-66). Westbrook’s stat-line looks a little something like this: 23.7 points, 10.4 assists, 7.7 rebounds and 2.1 steals per contest for the 52-22 Thunder. Oh yeah, let’s not forget his 15 triple-doubles, which are the most throughout a regular season since Magic Johnson‘s 17 back in ’88-89.

Besides Westbrook, no other player in the league should at least steal a vote from Curry, even though all-in-all he should be unanimous at the end of the day.

So many arguments can be made as to why Curry should become a unanimous MVP. His team, the Warriors are on pace to win an NBA regular-season record 73-games, which would beat the previous record set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, which was 72. Not only is his team having one of the best regular seasons in league history, but Curry’s play throughout the journey has created many opinions that he’s having the best season in the history of the league, which should help propel him to become a unanimous MVP.

Curry’s unanimous MVP accomplishments:

  • Has broken his league-record most three-pointers in a season for the third time.
  • First player in league history to make at least 300 three-pointers throughout a regular-season, and could hit 400, as he’s currently at 350 with nine games remaining.
  • Leads the league in 50-point games (3)
  • Leads the league in 20-point quarters (7)
  • Could become the first player to average at least 30 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists without touching 3,000 minutes.
  • 3rd player in league history to go 50-45-90 over the course of a season, joining Steve Nash (’07-08) and Steve Kerr (’95-96).

Put everything together and you understand why he’s the only legitimate choice for MVP, but again could still be penalized. Like last year, Curry is on a great team, and people love the narrative of players doing more with less, just look at Houston Rockets guard James Harden just a season ago, who won MVP at the players awards voted for by his peers.

With that being said, another sleeper to possibly get a first-place vote is Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs.

This season has been Leonard’s coronation as a star in the league, and the next face of the Spurs. Alongside his new All-Star teammate in LaMarcus Aldridge, Leonard is averaging 21.0, 6.8 rebounds and 1.8 steals per night for the black and silver. He’s been the best player on that team, as they’re having a historical season also, and are 62-12 through 74 games, and are only 4.5 games back of the Warriors for the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.

Leonard, dubbed “The Claw” in recent years, is a better three-pointer shooter, statistically speaking, and is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, and has a great chance to go back-to-back. His defense is what him got him known, but his offense is what got him in the MVP conversation. The two-way play he’s shown this year is why he might also get a first-place vote.

Steve Kerr though, Curry’s head coach, wouldn’t be surprised if his star guard wasn’t voted unanimously:

"[via IBABuzz.com]“I would not be shocked if he were not unanimous because there’s always some clever voter out there. It’s just like the Baseball Hall of Fame,” Kerr told Diamond Leung of Bay Area News Group on 03/18/16. “There’s nobody that’s ever been unanimous because there’s always some writer out there who decides, ‘Oh, I don’t want to vote Babe Ruth. That would be sacrilegious to actually have somebody be unanimous. Let’s make Babe Ruth wait 10 years.’ There’s going to be somebody like that out there.”"

If history repeats itself, then there will be at least one or two players who will receive at least a single first-place vote. But the NBA is ever-changing, and if outsiders have learned anything from Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors this season it’s this: history is meant to be edited and re-written. If you take into account everything that’s been accomplished this singular season alone, you’d believe Curry would become the first unanimous MVP.

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What makes it a little difficult is that the 2015-16 regular-season has been historically great, and the debate will continue until votes are tallied and released if Curry is or should be a unanimous MVP. Until then, it’ll just be theory until it comes to fruition or remains a thought for future possibilities.

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