The best player on the best team of the NBA regular season looks set to claim the league's top individual award. Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry will soon be announced as the 2014-15 NBA Most Valuable Player, according to a report from Monte Poole of CSNBayArea.comconfirmed by Yahoo Sports' Marc Spears.
Curry was considered to be the frontrunner for the award for the bulk of the regular season and outlasted plenty of deserving competition, including Houston Rockets guard James Harden.
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Poole reported the news following the Warriors' comfortable victory over the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals. He also provides a few details on the announcement, including its potential date:
Official announcement will come this week, sources said, likely on Monday between Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference semifinals series between the Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies. The timing of the announcement, one source said Sunday morning, remains flexible and could become between Games 2 and 3 of the Warriors-Grizzlies series.
Curry, who on Sunday scored a game-high 22 points in a 101-86 Warriors victory over Memphis, will become the first Warrior in the franchise's 53-year California history to win the league's highest individual honor. The 27-year-old in February started the All-Star Game for the second consecutive season, this time leading all players in number of votes. [...]
The runner-up in the voting, according to sources, was Houston guard James Harden, who was considered the co-leader in the two-man race with Curry.
Curry had been anxiously awaiting news of the award. A week ago, he told Yahoo's Marc Spears that he got nervous after receiving a call on his phone that said it was from "NBA." It was actually NBA vice president Rod Thorn asking what the referees told him after he was fouled on a game-tying 3-pointer at the end of regulation during Game 3 of the Warriors' first-round series against theNew Orleans Pelicans.
Curry worked his way into the NBA conversation early as the Warriors established themselves as the best team of the regular season. He was the top player on a roster that won a franchise-record 67 games, averaging 23.8 ppg (48.7 percent from the field, 44.3 percent from deep) and 7.7 apg while breaking his own 2-year-old record for 3-pointers made in a single season. Curry also improved his previously poor defense and played with plenty of style to make himself the most consistently fun superstar in the NBA.
Harden led a number of challengers for the award, including Oklahoma City Thunder dynamo Russell Westbrook (whose candidacy died as soon as his team missed out on the playoffs), New Orleans Pelicans forward Anthony Davis, Los Angeles Clippers point guard Chris Paul, and some guy on the Cleveland Cavaliers named LeBron James. Harden's candidacy depended on his brutally efficient scoring and role as the offensive linchpin for a Rockets squad that lost Dwight Howard for several months due to knee soreness. He would have been a perfectly acceptable winner of the award, but Curry had the credentials and broad popularity to become the clear frontrunner. He thenwon even more support with several fantastic performances after the Warriors had already clinched the West's No. 1 seed. Curry also has a strong argument for his level of importance to the Warriors relative to that of other players, because first-year head coach Steve Kerr reformulated the team's elite offense around his skills when he took over last summer.
Wilt Chamberlain is the only player in Warriors history to win MVP, but he did so in 1959-60 when the franchise was located in Philadelphia.
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