A warning and an apology to kick off today’s column: I’m pretty certain there will be some significant factual and statistical information omitted from what you are about to read. But please, it’s not my fault. Because today, I’m writing about Steph Curry, and if I included every record, every landmark, every eye-popping stat that he’s been breaking lately? Well, there wouldn’t be room for anything else. “There’s something beautiful about it,” Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr told reporters, when asked about his star player’s recent form. “It really is an art. Nobody in the history of the game has ever done what he’s doing right now.” Sure, beautiful for Kerr, exhilarating to even the neutrals and truly bewildering for any defender set with the task of stopping him from scoring. Good luck with that. Curry is raining down 3-pointers, and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it. He’s swatting away double teams and he’s ripping the heart out of entire teams, because there’s something internally destroying about trotting back down the court and knowing you’re powerless to prevent yet another bucket from dropping. He’s making a late, late run at the league MVP award, and it’s a discussion that’s going to make people have to think deeper about what that title actually means – and how it should be delivered. For most of the season, the frontrunners have been Nikola Jokic (-500 with FOX Bet) and Joel Embiid (+300), each big man leading his team with power and consistency, dominating on both ends of the floor and different sides of the country. Either would be worthy, but what about Curry, currently listed at +2000? Does a three-week stretch of bona fide, relentless, historic insanity trump being your team’s rock and bringing it all season long? That’s what the voters will have to decide. Curry is decimating our concepts of realistic expectation. He is doing silly things, and he’s doing them all the time. Making 10-or-more 3-pointers in a game is silly, so silly that apart from him only one man – teammate Klay Thompson – has done it at least five times in his career. Curry has done it four times … in the past week. No one has ever made as many threes as the 72 he has managed in a 10-game stretch. With 49 points against the 76ers to follow 47 at the Boston Celtics, Curry became the first player at 33-or-older to score 45-plus in consecutive games since Michael Jordan two decades ago. He became the first player in NBA history to go 11 straight games of 30-or-more after age 33, too, surpassing Kobe Bryant. There is still plenty of time left in April, but his five 40-plus games in April has already surpassed the most ever in a month, formerly held by Bryant and Jordan. Things are getting a little stat-heavy around here and you wouldn’t believe how many I just left out. So, what about this MVP then? On FS1’s “First Things First,” Nick Wright argued that Curry is not, or should not be, in serious consideration, primarily because his run of excellence has been relatively brief. “(But) I would argue he has got something even more valuable,” Wright said. “Going into this season there was a legitimate question about Steph. Can you put him on a terrible team and he carries them to relevance and playoff contention? He has answered that resoundingly – ‘yes.’” However, even in Philadelphia, where Embiid becomes ever more beloved with each passing year, there were MVP chants struck up in support of Curry. The three-time NBA champion has made it a strange MVP race. For while Curry only burst into life after returning from a tailbone contusion injury at the end of March, this rampant streak has put him above Bradley Beal on the scoring charts – he’s now averaging 31.4 points per game thanks to his own brand of “April Madness,” where he’s averaged 40.8 each night and is over 50% accuracy from downtown. Curry’s exploits could add a touch of intrigue to the postseason, as well. The Warriors are now in contention to move up to eighth or even seventh in the Western Conference standings. Assuming they survive the play-in tournament, facing a red-hot Curry in a playoff series wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of fun. The conference leaders, the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz, have been phenomenal this season, but neither would necessarily relish having to survive a Curry shooting barrage. For now, the show looks set to continue, with Curry displaying neither the willingness nor the likelihood of cooling off. All of which has left everyone wondering how you do something so provenly difficult and yet make it look so easy. The solution, apparently, is just by keeping it simple. “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, you just play basketball,” Curry said. “It’s obviously working.” You think? Here’s what others have said … Shannon Sharpe, Undisputed: “You can’t give a guy the MVP that’s in the 9th spot. The only reason we’re talking about this is because of the playoffs and the play-in games. With no play-in game, what are we doing here?” Marcus Thomas II, The Athletic: “Still, this isn’t an MVP season. What Curry is doing is bigger than that. A trophy can’t begin to encapsulate what we’re witnessing. … There are MVP levels, and then there are basketball history levels. Curry’s essentially one-upping himself, pushing his transcendence to a new pinnacle, and coronating himself as a basketball revolutionary. MVPs are rational, explainable. What Curry’s doing is not. MVPs are fodder for comparisons. Rankings are centered on production and data. Curry’s play this season, especially right now, transcends discourse and banter. Making this about where he ranks and his legacy misses the point. Making this about awards is too typical of how we’ve come to regard greatness. Curry is provoking a different kind of awe, the kind that reminds you why sports are dope and why basketball is among the coolest.” Dan Devine, The Ringer: “(Steph) Curry is not the only transcendent player in the NBA. We will tell our children and grandchildren what it was like to watch LeBron do everything at a higher level than basically anyone ever, and Durant destroy softly and constantly, and Kyrie weave, and Zion explode, and Giannis extend, and so on, and so on. But nothing else feels like this. Nothing else feels like it does when Steph becomes wreathed in flames and just starts experimenting, exploring the studio space to see how far he can push the boundaries of what we understand to be true about how the ball finds the net. It’s what we’re searching for night after night—the moment that makes you leap out of your seat and start speaking in tongues, the fleeting glimpse of forever we hope against hope we might catch every time we tune in.” |
