You can bet on it — Curry headed for MVP award again in NBA
If you hop on a flight to Las Vegas (or if you have an internet connection and a credit card) you can place a bet on who will be this year’s NBA MVP before the season starts Tuesday.
The MVP odds board is a who’s who of the NBA — LeBron James has the best odds, but Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, and reigning MVP Russell Westbrook aren’t far behind.
Farther down the list, clearly in a second, or even third tier, is a 29-yearold who has won two MVPs, one of them unanimously, and plays point guard for the best team in basketball.
His one-man basketball revolution is still happening, but the basketball world seems to have forgotten just how good Warriors guard Stephen Curry is.
I think that will be a temporary condition, though, because Curry is going to be the NBA’s MVP again this season.
Curry already has a place in NBA history as the greatest shooter of all time, but after winning his second title in June and signing the first $200 million contract in NBA history in July, he arrived at Warriors training camp with something to prove.
The changes were subtle, but Curry will enter this season bigger, stronger — and most importantly — far more comfortable, on and off the court.
“Nine years in, I should be (more comfortable) … I don’t know how it took me so long,” Curry joked Sunday. “Little known fact about what I did this summer: Actually, I was in the gym.”
That work is going to pay off — to the tune of 12-to-1 odds, if you get in early enough.
Curry’s preseason form was spellbinding, and while you shouldn’t read too far into the exhibition schedule, that success — so effortless and unique and reminiscent of the 2015 and 2016 seasons — only deepened my suspicion that Curry is going to have a monster, perhaps precedent-setting 2017-18 campaign.
‘Mental peak’
It’s a bold proclamation, but it’s one that has been tacitly approved by Warriors general manager Bob Myers and coach Steve Kerr.
“He’s reached his mental peak, as far as he’s seen a lot,” Myers said last week. “Funny thing is, I expected him to be better. That’s what he does. He’s just not built to do anything but work hard. He’s done it his whole life. … It’s a very quiet confidence, but it’s powerful.”
Said Kerr: “I think Steph is at his absolute peak right now. Physically, emotionally, this is probably as good as he’s ever going to be, this year. I think he’s better now than he was last year and the year before. And that’s saying something.”
You might have noticed that the so-called miraculous rise of Curry plateaued a bit last year. While Curry had a season as statistically impressive as his first MVP campaign, he was coming off arguably the greatest offensive season in NBA history — the one that earned him the first unanimous MVP award in NBA history — so his line of 25.3 points, 4.5 rebounds and 6.6 assists didn’t resonate perhaps as it should have. As such, you even thought the rest of the league had caught up and that Curry’s run as arguably the league’s best player was over.
Make no mistake, he was still one of the best players in the NBA last year — an All-Star and an All-NBA second-team member — but with the Warriors’ addition of Durant, another elite player, the spotlight didn’t shine as brightly on Curry. The clearest example: Curry averaged 26.8 points, 9.4 assists, and 8.0 rebounds per game in the 2017 NBA Finals but didn’t win Finals MVP — Durant did, and no one questioned that decision.
That could have created tension or drama.
After all, no one was more instrumental in the Warriors’ ascension from NBA afterthought to professional sports’ standard bearer, and no one sacrificed more than Curry to bring Durant to the Warriors. He put ego, personal accolades, and endorsement dollars aside to help recruit Durant, knowing that the downside was what actually happened: Curry was overshadowed on his own team.
But there’s no grudge, no I’ll-prove-you-wrong anger toward anyone on the Warriors or the NBA universe as a whole. That said, Curry looks determined to remind everyone that he’s still the most influential person in the league, this side of LeBron James, and one of the most influential players in NBA history.
“If you want to just say who affects the game the most offensively, Steph’s the best player in the NBA,” Kerr said. “Nobody’s been able to shoot off the dribble from 35 feet in a normal setting. But he does that, which changes an entire game. Everything we do revolves around Steph. You can talk about where he stands in terms of the best players in the league. He’s obviously one of the best. By that standard, he’s the best.”
Durant is the favorite to win NBA MVP from the Warriors’ roster this season, and the rationale behind those odds is simple: now that KD is in his second year in Oakland, he should feel more comfortable and things will run smoother for him inside the Warriors’ systems.
But that same, irrefutable logic should apply to Curry, too.
Bird-like
With that in mind, Curry’s incredible 2017 playoff numbers — he averaged 28.1 points, 6.2 rebounds and 6.7 assists — should be an expectation of things to come this season. Only one player in NBA history has put up a line like that for an entire season while also making 40 percent of his 3-pointers: Larry Bird.
The hyper-elite 50/45/90 club (that’s field-goal percentage, 3-point percentage and free-throw percentage), of which only Curry and Warriors advisor Steve Nash are members, should be a goal in 2017-18.
Durant should have a stellar season, but Curry could break records or invent new statistical thresholds by which all others shall be judged.
Curry’s play revolutionized basketball — as Kerr said, no one has ever played the point guard position quite like Curry — and his best game is likely yet to come.
If we do, in fact, see Peak Curry this season, there won’t be any mystery as to how or why it happened, but we’ll certainly be wondering in June how or why so few foresaw it happening.
Stephen Curry is about to do something special. I’d recommend getting your tickets (or betting slips) early.