Remember when this season’s MVP race was one of the closest in recent memory? Us neither.
The Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry was officially announced as winner of the Maurice Podoloff Trophy today just after hours after a report emerged that he’d be the award’s recipient. James Harden of the Houston Rockets and LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers placed second and third, respectively, while the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook and New Orleans Pelicans’ Anthony Davis also finished in the top-five.
Pertinent details of the league’s announcement are below, courtesy of NBA.com.
The Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry, who set a single-season record for three-pointers made and led the league’s best regular-season team in scoring, assists and steals, has won the 2014-15 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player Award, the NBA announced today.
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Curry totaled 1,198 points, including 100 of 130 first-place votes, from a panel of 129 sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada, as well as the Kia MVP fan vote on NBA.com.
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Rounding out the top five in the voting were the Houston Rockets’ James Harden (936 points, 25 first-place votes), the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James (552 points, five first-place votes), the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook (352 points) and the New Orleans Pelicans’ Anthony Davis (203 points).
Players received 10 points for a first-place tally, seven points for a second-place tally, five points for third-place tally, three points for a fourth-place tally, and one point for a fifth-place tally. 129 media members from across North America were tasked with the the voting, and the Kia fan vote accounted for one ballot, too. Full voting results can be found here.
The discrepancy in total points between Curry and Harden – long considered the award’s frontrunners – belies just how overwhelming support was for the eventual MVP winner. Despite outpacing his runner-up counterpart by 236 points, the Golden State Warriors superstar garnered 100 of a possible 130 first-place votes. That 76.9 percent rate of first-place marks ranks sixth-highest among the last 10 voting cycles, and is 6.7 percent larger than James’ share in 2011-2012.
Curry’s win isn’t historically dominant like those of Durant and James the past two years. Any Harden believers who expected this season’s MVP voting to be close, though, should be sorely disappointed by these results. It’s Steph in a landslide.
That shouldn’t necessarily be surprising, either. We’ve been on the Curry bandwagon since December when Golden State went 10-3 without defensive anchor Andrew Bogut and momentum for Davis slowed. The best player on the league’s best team does hardly a foolproof MVP make, but this is a case where that sometimes imprecise line of thinking was anything but.
The Warriors went 67-15 during the regular season and are undefeated in the playoffs. They ranked second and first in offensive and defensive efficiencies, and Curry had his team’s best offensive rating and fourth-best defensive rating. His net rating of 17.0 was a league-high, as was his 9.16 real plus-minus. He set a new historical benchmark in terms of usage, efficiency, and playmaking prowess, and shot a mind-boggling 51.7 percent from three-point range after the All-Star break on 8.3 attempts per game.
Even those obviously gaudy statistical feats, though, somehow do disservice to Curry’s all-encompassing impact on Golden State. Everything about Steve Kerr’s beautiful motion offense stems from the supreme on- and off- ball influence of his best player, while the point guard’s vast improvements on the other end loom similarly large.
Though James failed to win a fifth MVP this season, it still stands that no player in basketball has a greater impact on his team. That Curry has even made that widespread notion a viable argument, however, is perhaps the longest feather in his MVP cap. A player known as little as two years ago for marksmanship and not much else might be the game’s best offensive player and most underrated defender at his position.
For everything LeBron means to Northeast Ohio, too, Curry comes close to replicating in the Bay Area. He’s an icon of rare sorts at the tender age of 27 years-old, putting Golden State back at the forefront of the sports world after decades of irrelevance with every splashed three-pointer, ankle-breaking crossover, and dazzling dime. An entire generation will grow up basketball and Warriors fans now, a massive development due almost solely to Curry’s sweeping cultural imprint on Northern California.
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Sounds like an MVP to us.
And that’s not a slight to Harden, James, or any other contender – including one unjustly on the voting periphery like Chris Paul. They were brilliant all season long, and the former’s performance indeed stands out from other vote-getters’ due to his usual stellar efficiency, obvious defensive strides, and Houston finishing 56-26 in the loaded Western Conference despite a rash of injuries.
But this is still Curry’s year more than anyone else’s, and the MVP voting properly reflects that reality. Now let’s see if the race for a championship will, too.
[NBA]
