Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is coming off a performance for the ages in Monday’s thrilling overtime win against the Portland Trail Blazers. He’s also going to be accepting the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award for the second consecutive year.
While this was already known, the details behind the vote are astonishing.
Curry is the first unanimous MVP in NBA history. You read that right, the first one to receive all first-place votes in the 60-plus year history of the award:
Golden State's Steph Curry is the first unanimous MVP in NBA history.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 10, 2016
Wilt Chamberlain won four. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar earned six. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson won three. The great Michael Jordan earned this distinction five times. None of them were unanimous in the vote.
Curry is coming off a regular season in which he led the NBA in scoring (30.1) and steals (2.1) en route to leading the defending champions to a record 73 wins in 82 games. He also broke his own single-season mark for three pointers made (402), besting his previous mark by 116.
While Curry found himself laid up for the vast majority of the Warriors’ first two playoff series with both an ankle and a knee injury, he jumped back on to the national stage with a ridiculous Game 4 performance against the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday, putting up a NBA record 17 points in overtime to help lead the Warriors to a 3-1 series advantage.
San Antonio Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard came in second with LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers rounding out the top three.