Curry wins MVP Award again
Fred Jeter | 5/13/2016, 7:36 a.m.
Stephen Curry, the best player on the NBA’s best team, has won his second straight MVP award.
In so doing, the Golden State Warriors’ point guard became the first ever to win the MVP unanimously, collecting all 131 votes from a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters.
The announcement was made Tuesday.
The San Antonio Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard was a distant second, with 54 second place and 34 third place votes.
Shaquille O’Neal in 2000 and LeBron James in 2013 came closest to perfection previously, garnering 120 of the 121 votes cast at the time.
So how many MVPs can Curry win before he’s through?
At 28, the brilliant Curry might have a shot at catching Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won a record six MVP awards from 1971 to 1980.
The 6-foot-3, 190-pound Curry averaged 30.1 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.7 assists this season, leading the Warriors to a best-in-NBA history 73-9 record.
James, with four MVPs at age 31, is also a threat to Abdul-Jabbar’s record.
It is easy making the case that Curry is the greatest long-distance shooter in basketball history. He buried a record 402 shots from beyond the arc this season, obliterating the old mark of 286 he set himself a year ago.
He was something of a late bloomer coming out of Charlotte Christian High School in 2006. At the time, he was listed at 6-foot-2, 165 pounds.
According to recruiting service Rivals, Curry drew only three scholarship offers — from nearby Davidson College, where he chose to attend, and also High Point University in North Carolina and Virginia Commonwealth University, where the team was coached at the time by Jeff Capel III.
Curry’s 25-year-old brother, Seth, played at Liberty and Duke universities. Seth Curry is now a restricted free agent after playing this past season with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.