WARRIORS GUARD CURRY NAMED NBA MVP
The NBA announced Monday that Stephen Curry is the winner of the Maurice Podoloff Trophy as the league’s Most Valuable Player for the 2014-15 season.
Curry beat out Houston guard James Harden in a race that turned out to be not that close.
Curry is the second player in Warriors history to be named MVP — and the first in the team’s West Coast Era (since 1962-63) — joining Wilt Chamberlain, who earned the honor as a rookie with the Philadelphia Warriors in 1959-60.
Curry, 27, led the Warriors to a franchise-record and NBA-best 67 wins this season (6715, .817) and helped the Warriors capture their first Pacific Division title since 1975-76. Golden State is just the 10th team in NBA history to win 67 games in a single season.
In 80 games, the sixth-year player posted averages of 23.8 points (sixth in the NBA), 7.7 assists (sixth), 4.3 rebounds and 2.04 steals (fourth) in 32.7 minutes, the fewest minutes played by an MVP in league history. The 6-foot-3-inch Curry led the league in 3-point field goals for a third consecutive season, hitting 286 to break his NBA record for single-season 3-pointers, and ranked third in 3-point percentage (.443) while leading the league in free-throw percentage (.914).
THE SPORTS XCHANGE
ron James had 19 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists, but the Cavs lost for the first time this postseason after sweeping the Boston Celtics in the first round.
Cleveland will be without forward Kevin Love (shoulder) for the rest of the postseason and guard J.R. Smith (suspension) for the first two games of this series. Coach David Blatt kept his starters a secret until minutes before tipoff, ultimately deciding on Iman Shumpert to replace Smith and Mike Miller to replace Love.
Shumpert scored 22 points, but Miller struggled to keep up with Bulls forward Mike Dunleavy, who scored 13 of his 14 points in the first quarter.
Dunleavy made all five of his shots (including three 3-pointers) in the quarter and took just one shot the rest of the night.
Similarly, Gasol scored 13 points in the third quarter as he kept running high pickand-rolls with Rose and the Cavs kept botching the coverage. Gasol was left with wide-open, midrange jumpers around the perimeter, and he buried nearly all of them to slow the Cavaliers’ momentum after they had tied the game at 53.
Blatt was concerned about the Cavaliers’ eight-day layoff — and rightfully so. The Cavaliers trailed by double figures less than six minutes into the game and fell behind by 16 early in the second quarter.
They spent the rest of the quarter digging out of it behind James’ effort and a flurry of slicing, twisting drives to the basket from Irving.
Now they’re fighting just to even the series while the Bulls can take a commanding series lead back to Chicago with one more victory. Game 2 is Wednesday night in Cleveland.