8. Stephen Curry, guard, Golden State Warriors
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RPrNFbiNM9U
We can go on record now indicating Curry will not join Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in Association history to win three consecutive MVP awards. It’s not that Curry has seen a major regression in production this season. Here’s a guy that’s still averaging 25.6 points per game while shooting at a 48 percent clip from the field. Heck, Curry boasts a .594 effective field goal percentage and is averaging 1.4 points per shot. He’s been tremendous.
The issue here is that Golden State — coming off a 73-win season — added the aforementioned Kevin Durant to the mix in free agency. Short of the Warriors putting up a better record than last year, it’s hard to imagine Curry being the Association’s MVP. At 43-8, that would require the team going undefeated from here on out. Golden State is great, but not that great.
We have, however, seen Curry up his game a great deal over the past couple weeks. He’s averaging 30.0 points while shooting at an absurd 51 percent from distance over the past 10 games. We’ve seen Curry go bananas over a long stretch of action in the past. Should this somehow happen post All-Star break, he will definitely shoot up the rankings here.