Hours after scoring 40 points off the bench in his first game in two weeks—including 17 in overtime—Steph Curry has been named the NBA's MVP, and it wasn't even close. Voters made Curry the first MVP in NBA history to be unanimously selected for the honor. It's a distinction as deserved as it is unsurprising, at least for anyone who has even just casually watched this Warriors season.
Kawhi Leonard was a distant second with less than half as many votes as Curry, and LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Durant rounded out the Top 5. Those four also-rans are, at the risk of belaboring the point, extremely good basketball players, and that they are eating Curry's dust well after it settled and he's dipped below the horizon says more about Steph's greatness than it does about any of their theoretical shortcomings.It was a perfect storm for Curry, who had a statistically insane year individually, while starring for the kind of team year that sportswriters mess their pants for. Curry averaged 30.1 points per game, which led the league and was 6.3 points better than his first MVP season. He also shot 50.4 percent from the field, including 45.4 percent from behind the arc. His three-point shooting was astonishingly prolific; he hit 402 threes in 79 regular season games, which set an NBA record. That bested his previous year's mark—which was also the previous NBA record—by 116 baskets. Curry also led the Warriors to an NBA record 73 wins, topping 1995-96 72-win season the Chicago Bulls put together. So, yeah. Unanimous sounds about right.Full MVP voting results are here: pic.twitter.com/7LbRPnArRx
— Jeremy Woo (@Jeremy_Woo) May 10, 2016