Drafting the blueprint to Stephen Curry's 3rd MVP season

Only 8 players in NBA history have 3 or more MVP trophies.

Warriors star Stephen Curry’s 2 MVP campaigns already puts him in elite company alongside only 12 other players in history.

Another addition to the trophy cabinet would put him in rarified air alongside Moses Malone, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson as the only 3-time winners.

Online sportsbook BetOnline has the following odds for 2019-2020 MVP:

Giannis Antetokounmpo: +350

Stephen Curry: +500

Anthony Davis: +700

James Harden: +700

Kawhi Leonard: +800

LeBron James: +800

Joel Embiid: +1200

Nikola Jokic: +1600

Luka Doncic: +1600 (??)

Nikola Jokic: +1600

Karl-Anthony Towns: +2000

Damian Lillard: +2500

Odds-on favorite Antetokounmpo is coming off a disappointing FIBA World Cup campaign in which Greece failed to make it out of the second group stage. He averaged 14.8 PPG (good for 25th in the tournament), 8.8 RPG and 2.4 APG.

The Bucks campaign had a similarly dispiriting ending with four straight losses to the Raptors in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. They sign-and-traded Malcolm Brogdon, one of their three best players last season, to the Pacers. His contract is worth $85 million over four years. Worryingly, they put all their eggs in the Khris Middleton basket, inking the forward to a five-year, $178 million deal. The 28-year old similarly struggled in the FIBA competition as team USA finished seventh.

His breakout season last year moved him from an intriguing young player with potential to a bona fide superstar. With superstar status comes increased expectations. The Bucks are expected to have the highest win total next season; most betting sites have them around 57 wins. If the Bucks regress from last season and fail to lead the East in the regular season, it could spell trouble for Giannis’ MVP chances.

Many of the other candidates for the Maurice Podoloff Trophy will suffer from cannibalization – their cohabitating stars will eat into their production. Warriors fans will be all too familiar with this phenomenon as Curry and Durant assembled spectacular seasons alongside each other but were negatively affected, in terms of MVP chances, by each other’s brilliance. This reduces the chances of LA’s star quartet – James, Leonard, Davis and George.

Harden will be unable to put up the gaudy box score stats that he has put up in the past few seasons alongside Westbrook. The two have posted the two highest single-season usage rates in NBA history. With Westbrook’s lack of off-ball ability, it will necessitate Harden to play off-ball more often.

It won’t help that Harden spent all summer bemoaning the media’s disrespect toward his achievements last season.

“It’s out of my control,” Harden said. “I think once the media, they create a narrative about somebody from the beginning of the year. I think they just take the narrative and run with it the entire year. I don’t want to get into any details, but all I can do is control what I can do. I went out there and did what I was supposed to do at a high level, you know what I’m saying? A few seasons where anybody’s ever done that before.”

In a wild offseason where any of the superstars shuffled across the league trying to find what eludes them – titles, happiness or respect – Curry has remained the one constant.

Amidst the chaos, Curry became the second-longest tenured player with one team in the NBA behind only Udonis Haslem, who re-upped with the Heat for another year.

The environment around him has drastically shifted with a whole new stadium and practice facility, only three returning players to start the season and a youthful squad on which he is the oldest.

The departure of Durant comes with a silver lining – the world gets to see Curry in full force. Curry’s accommodating nature compelled him to take a backseat and ease Durant into the lineup. Curry posted his worst shooting efficiency of the last five seasons in 2016-17, Durant’s first campaign with the Warriors. His usage and true shooting fell from the previous season from 32.6% to 30.1% and 66.9% to 62.4%, respectively.

Unlike most players who see a fall in efficiency with an increase in volume, Curry historically doesn’t. By having to bear the brunt of the offensive workload and unencumbered by outside expectations, Curry will be able and even asked to take the ridiculous 30-footers that characterized his 2015-16 unanimous MVP campaign on a more frequent basis.

Klay Thompson’s dad, Mychal Thompson, certainly thinks so.

"Now, they're not going to be as good as they were last year – and by the way, I predict Steph is going to have 500 3s this year without having to share the ball that much back in the backcourt with Klay," Mychal said Friday on SiriusXM NBA Radio. "So he's going to come back to his MVP form we saw two years ago."

The Warriors’ fan base were deeply saddened to see Andre Iguodala leave and Shaun Livingston stretched, waived and eventually retiring. The two in their mid-30’s were seeing a declining effectiveness on the court, especially in the regular season.

The two non-shooters often forced Steve Kerr to run Curry off-ball, where is lethal but doesn’t fully utilize his versatile offensive skillset and left him vulnerable to being roughed up by opposing defenses. Kerr has noted that the Warriors will feature a more pick-and-roll heavy offense, where Curry ranks in the 92nd percentile, averaging 1.02 points per play.

The increased spacing provided by the likes of D’Angelo Russell and Alec Burks instead of the two veterans will bolster Curry’s prowess. Perhaps the most frustrating thing as a Warriors fan was seeing Curry helplessly navigating through screens only to be met by double and triple teams in the NBA Finals as the Raptors mercilessly sought to neuter the Warriors’ primary scoring threat.

Current projections and betting websites have the Warriors at around 47 wins, 10 less than they posted last season. Some experts such as Bobby Marks even have the Warriors missing the playoffs.

With Curry’s comfort in the underdog role and his penchant for putting on a display, it would be unwise to bet against the 2-time MVP to encore.