Does the NBA not want Stephen Curry winning league MVP?

Does the NBA not want Stephen Curry to win league MVP?

While Stephen Curry has been on a slump lately, the Golden State Warriors guard has been the best player in the NBA for the past two seasons, yet he only received five first-place votes for the award last year, and just dropped out of the top five this year even though the Warriors have the second-best record in the league.

The NBA is a very narrative-driven league when it comes to awards. A lot of the time, if a player can pick up momentum at the right time, they can gain themselves some MVP votes, or even take home the award (sometimes undeservingly).

Stephen Curry was my pick for MVP in the 2020-21 NBA season, and I’m still confused as to why he didn’t win it. Curry led the league in scoring with 32 points per game, but even more impressive than that is the fact that the Warriors finished the regular season as the eighth seed (or 37-26 when Curry played which was equivalent to the fifth seed) having finished with the worst record in the league the season prior.

The bottom line, he was more valuable to his team than any other player in the league.

The Warriors last year were nothing without Curry, they were the worst team in the league willed to the play-in by the best player in the league. But here’s where the narratives got in the way of Curry getting his MVP trophy. Critics were saying that Curry wasn’t deserving of the award because of the Warriors’ record. Curry was basically getting blamed that the Warriors were 2-7 without him (StatMuse).

Now, the Warriors are 31-12, 2.5 games back behind the best record in the NBA, and Curry, while having slowed down in past weeks, has been having a very good season. While I do agree that he shouldn’t be the frontrunner in the MVP power rankings right now because of his shooting slump (but not top 5? Really?), once he gets back into form, he should be right at the top of the list.

The critics told him he needed a good record to win the award, and now he has the second-best in the league.

I think one of the most ironic things that have come out of this is the fact that in the most recent MVP ladder, Nikola Jokic is second, even though the Nuggets are the sixth seed. The media needs to choose a narrative and stick with it. Do you need to have a top-three seed in your conference to win MVP? Or is it more important that a player makes their team as good as they can possibly get, as we saw with last year’s Golden State Warriors?

I’m looking forward to seeing what excuses are made this year to avoid Stephen Curry winning MVP.