Earvin “Magic” Johnson, a man who nearly two years ago quit his job as president of basketball operations at Los Angeles Lakers – at least in part – so he could tweet what he wanted, usually tweeting a lot of obvious things in basketball.
Warriors fans will not roll their eyes at Johnson’s latest.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer tweeted Sunday night that Steph Curry is the best favorite for the NBA MVP this season.
Curry scored a career high of 31.0 points per game. Yes, almost a point more than he averaged in 2015-16 as the first unanimous NBA MVP in league history. The 33-year-old also shoots 49.1 percent from the field, 42.7 percent on three-pointers and 92.2 percent from the free-throw line.
The Warriors, without Klay Thompson and amid myriad injuries, are 28-29 and have an NBA playing field as the ninth-place finisher in the Western Conference. Curry’s supporting cast will not be confused with his teams of ’15 -16, when the Warriors won 73-9. Few stars have less spacing than Curry, who is thriving this season despite defending so much attention.
Curry really turned it on during his last ten games, averaging 39.1 points while shooting 54.6 / 48.9 / 90.1 percent from the field, 3-point distance and free-throw line has. The Warriors needed every big part of his greatness and climbed 6-4 during that time while cracking out of a potentially seasonal funk.
The Warriors will be looking at the off-season on the outside if the NBA has not added play-in teams again, and MVP voters recently did not award players to teams near the play-off bubble.
Even Russell Westbrook, who won the award in 2016-’17 after scoring a triple-double for the Kevin Durant-less Oklahoma City Thunder, was in a team that finished sixth in the Western Conference. On top of that, the late Kobe Bryant did not win the NBA MVP awards in ’05 -06 and ’06 -07 after agreeing the Lakers to seventh place both seasons.
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As of this writing, Golden State is only two games back from the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies and 2.5 behind the Dallas Mavericks in seventh place. If the Warriors have broken the traditional top eight, he could have a stronger case against Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and even the reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Then Johnson certainly would not have tweeted about Curry’s candidacy if it were not so obvious, and perhaps the two-time NBA MVP would match Magic’s collection this season.
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