Has Steph Curry Already Sewn Up MVP?

Toward the end of November, as the Golden State Warriors seized the record for the longest-ever win streak to start a season, ESPN ran an article that posed a fascinating question. Basically, it asked if Stephen Curry could be both MVP and Most Improved Player in this year's NBA season. Logically speaking, that's an absurd proposition, but if you've been watching Golden State and seeing the way Curry is taking his game to another level, it actually makes some sense. And more importantly, it suggests that Curry may have all but wrapped up the 2015/16 MVP debate before Christmas.

In a way, it's basic math. If the reigning MVP is even in the conversation for Most Improved Player, could anyone else conceivably be considered a better MVP candidate for this season? Wouldn't someone else have to have improved even more to overtake him? These questions may not matter specifically because "improvement" is not completely quantifiable, but conceptually ESPN's proposition would seem to put Curry way out in front in the MVP race.

The current odds on the MVP race agree, but to a less emphatic extent. At Betfair, odds are updated throughout the season for this and a few other award races, and currently the projections favor Curry at 8/15 odds. That's a pretty solid outlook for the Golden State guard, though Pelicans power forward Anthony Davis remains hot on his heels with even odds and LeBron James can't be forgotten at 12/5. But even with relatively confident projections that Davis and James will remain in the competition, 8/15 shows a lot of faith in Curry for so early in the season.

And if that wasn't enough confidence regarding Curry's shot at a second straight MVP, consider this: Steve Nash, another uniquely creative point guard with a deadly shooting stroke who happened to win two MVPs, recently suggested he believes Curry is a transcendent star. Quoted at CBS Sports, Nash discussed his own outlook on Curry, which now includes first-hand experience due to Nash's role as a player development consultant for Golden State. For his part, Nash says Curry has taken what Nash did to a new level, which is about the strongest praise one player can offer another. The two are very different players of course, but at the same time it's harder to find a better comparison for Curry in recent NBA history than Nash.

And then there are the raw numbers, where Curry is basically eclipsing everything he did last year and stampeding toward various records in the process. He's leading the league in scoring, and his points per-40 minutes advantage on the rest of the league is even greater. He's on pace to obliterate his own record for most three pointers in a season, and he's leading what suddenly looks like one of the best teams in NBA history. Depending on your point of view, you may even count the fact that LeBron James has faded somewhat from the media spotlight as further evidence of Curry's pure dominance this season.

To say the Golden State guard has already sewn up the award is premature, because we're only about 20 games into an 82-game campaign. But he certainly has a bigger lead than we're used to seeing at this time of year, and if he stays healthy, it's very hard to imagine him losing ground at this point. We could very well see Curry win a second consecutive NBA MVP.