Stephen Curry and What the Most Valuable Player Does

Perhaps it's the NFL-core macho bravado with which the NBA has marketed its Very Important, Very Manly postseason, or maybe it's the way LeBron James keeps talking about the playoffs as if they were a sex act known only to demigods. Whatever the case, the Warriors' slightly harried title run feels oddly anticlimactic. They're not suffering through a character-testing crucible so much as a tough month at work, tussling with the Junkyard Grizz without ever seeming convincingly imperiled, set to face an excellent Clippers squad that nonetheless still features a moderately gimpy Chris Paul and relies on Glen Davis, Austin Rivers, and Hedo "The Hoagie Prince" Turkoglu. The Finals, should the Warriors arrive there, look like a relative breeze considering that the best team in the East right now might be a Bulls crew that's presently struggling against LeBron, a hobbled Kyrie Irving, and an assortment of NBA Rotation Players seemingly scooped out of a bulk bin. It could also be that not-so-juggernautish Cavs team. In other words, the title is the Warriors' to lose. Anything less would be disappointing, and surprising.

And yet, as Golden State's trying series against the Grizzlies is proving, they're not bulletproof. The Warriors need Steph Curry to play well, which seems like an obvious thing to point out, but James Harden's MVP case revolved largely around how he carried his team in a way Curry didn't. If you took Curry off the Warriors, that argument went, they would still be quite good, whereas the Rockets might not have made the playoffs if Harden hadn't been crushed out heavenly all year. Both of these statements can be true without diminishing the accomplishments of either player. Harden was indeed the savior of a brutally banged up Rockets squad, and the Warriors are deep enough that they probably could have nabbed something like a six-seed had Curry picked up a season-ending injury in November.

The two players were (and are) essential in different ways. We're seeing right now that Harden, even with a healthy-looking Dwight Howard behind him, doesn't quite have the firepower or the help to make it past the Clippers. In that same vein, Steph Curry's pair of poor shooting performances—and his team's corresponding losses against the Grizzlies—speak to the fact that without him, Golden State can only go so far.

It's unusual for a player of Curry's recently assumed star status to be both an upstart and a champion-elect. He's six years into his career, and six months older than the older-seeming Kevin Durant, but Steph fully arrived only last season, announcing himself as much more than a noodle-ankled bomber. It's been a sudden rise for Curry—or it has appeared sudden; that leap from pretty great player to league-torching dynamo is a sizable one, if only in the minds of fans—and now, in contrast to LeBron in 2009, Derrick Rose in 2011, or Durant in 2014, he's leading the overwhelming title favorite. Curry is something between a fresh-faced MVP and an established power, as it stands—both an aspirant conqueror and a throne-sitter.

This sort of thing doesn't happen often. The NBA is an incumbent's league. The teams that hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy typically do so after having accrued a few scars, and this is also true of the players that lead them. It's not that Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, LeBron, et al. needed to fail before they ultimately succeeded. But that's how their careers shook out, and it's how nearly every lionized Hall of Famer's narrative unfolds. This is Steph Curry's first bona fide championship shot, and he's going into it as the presumptive victor.

Of course, he's doing fine so far. He largely destroyed the Pelicans, and, on Monday night, he rediscovered his shooting touch and helped even the Warriors-Grizz series at 2-2. Experienced or not, Curry is the best all-around guard in the league, depending on how you feel about Chris Paul. There's nothing about the way he stutters and whirls toward the basket, or steps into preposterous 27-footers, or floats and fizzes passes over and through the defense, that makes you think Curry is less than extremely well-suited to bring the Bay its first title since the year that Rick Barry was nearly as perfect a basketball player as he claimed to be.

It's just peculiar is all—and compelling—that circumstances have conspired to position the NBA's newest, greatest player to have this particular kind of expectation placed upon him. He's supposed to win, despite never having won before. Curry has the talent and the terrific team behind him to make it happen, but he still has to actually do it. This is simultaneously a simple and complex thing, and undeniably difficult, regardless of the Warriors' injury luck and literally every competitor's misfortune. Steph Curry, having only last week won his first MVP, will decide whether it happens. This is novel territory for him, but there's no reason to believe he isn't ready.