Why Stephen Curry is the NBA's MVP USA TODAY Sports is checking in with the front-runners in this season's competitive NBA MVP race. We continue with Stephen Curry, whose special season has had everything to do with Golden State's dominating run

Sam Amick | USA TODAY Sports

OAKLAND – On the night that Stephen Curry seemed to set his sights on the MVP award, his Golden State Warriors boss stood inside a near-empty press conference room and stared at the television as if it were a pin-up model.

That night's box score was displayed on the enormous screen: 17 of 23 shooting for Curry, 45 points, 10 assists, and yet another one-sided win in the history books of this once-fledgling franchise. As has been the case for most of this season, majority owner Joe Lacob couldn't believe his eyes.

His head shook back and forth in amazement. His eyes stared at Curry's eye-popping line. His mind marveled. His mouth, eventually, began to move.

"I'm biased, for sure, but (the MVP race) is not even remotely (close)," Lacob told USA TODAY Sports after that Warriors' win against the Portland Trail Blazers. "I mean anyone who says that doesn't follow the NBA. I can't believe someone could put up those kinds of numbers in such an efficient way.

"Listen, I think it's OK for me to campaign (for Curry). It would be great if he wins (MVP) for our organization. It's a statement. It's a testament to what this organization is about and what he's about. So yes, I do want him to win it. But more than anything, I just think he flat out deserves it. As good as (the Houston Rockets') James Harden has been – and I think in eight out of 10 years he'd deserve it because he has been great – but Steph is the man. He's amazing."

In the eyes of this voter, Lacob couldn't be more wrong about this being a tight race. But he has the other part right: Curry deserves the MVP award.

There are many layers to this debate, but the most compelling part of Curry's case wasn't something that showed up in a box score or even on the Oracle Arena floor. It was a choice he made during lunch with his new coach last summer, when Steve Kerr came to town to sit down with his new star and they discussed the harsh reality of championship-caliber basketball: the alpha male has to be a two-way player.

All those years of Curry being a liability who had to be hidden on defense were coming to an end, with Kerr explaining that it was vital to set the right tone, the right demeanor for this group by having him guard the opposing team's point guard every time out.

The man who won three titles playing alongside Michael Jordan and two more with Tim Duncan knew of what he spoke. And Curry, who was going to ask for this chance if it hadn't been offered first, knew right then that his game was about to take an important next step.

"I'm really proud of (his defensive work), because I knew that was a responsibility I was going to have coming into the season," Curry told USA TODAY Sports. "(Former) coach (Mark) Jackson approached it a certain way, putting Klay (Thompson) – a long defender – on opposing point guards and me guarding off the ball mainly to save my legs for the offensive end. But this was my opportunity to guard my position night in and night out, not have to adjust for who we were playing. We were going to try to set the tone every night, and I asked to start that effort by guarding my man and just sticking to our gameplan.

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"Championship point guards, that's what they do… Obviously everybody has different strengths and weaknesses, but everybody has that competitive desire, kind of an ego about defending. You want to win that battle every single night – not just to outscore your opponent, but to make it tough on him. So I definitely was excited about it, and was pretty focused from Day One this season that I was going to have to do that every single night. It kind of keeps you more locked in on a nightly basis when you know you're not just going to be standing in the corner guarding the shooter and have to help every so often. You have to be (competing) 94 feet, especially with the talented (point guards) in this league, to know where everybody is at. You have to be ready to go. I think it has helped take my game to the next level from an intensity standpoint."

Should Curry wind up winning the media vote, it will have helped him get his hands on his first MVP award, too.

Because this race to the Maurice Podoloff trophy was so tight – with Curry, Harden, Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Chris Paul doing amazing basketball deeds at every turn – even the smallest perceived weakness had the potential to crush a candidate's case. That could have happened with Curry, who has long since become one of the game's most entertaining and efficient players but who was seen as a below-average defender until this season.

Lo and behold, the Warriors are on pace to finish the season with the league's top-ranked defense (98 points allowed per 100 possessions) and Curry is receiving rave reviews for the way he has defended. Through 76 games, Curry (according to NBA.com) was holding his man to a shooting mark this season (43.4%) that was the lowest among the aforementioned MVP candidates.

More importantly, that mark was 2.1 percentage points lower than the average shooting percentage for those opponents - a figure that trailed only the New Orleans Pelicans' Davis in that key category (his is a remarkable minus-6.6). Additionally, Curry's steals rate of 2.2 per 36 minutes played is tied with Westbrook for the lead among the aforementioned candidates.

Kerr, who hired defensive guru/longtime assistant coach Ron Adams to his staff to work with Curry,, sees their first meeting as the unofficial start of Curry's special season.

"What he told me was that he wants to be the best, that he wants to get better," Kerr said of the conversation that took place during their first lunch together. "And then when Ron Adams came aboard (after spending his last few seasons with the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics), Ron was adamant about Steph guarding his position and getting better. The beauty of it was that Steph embraced it. He didn't fight it. He embraced it. He wanted to do it."

The team's foremost defensive experts are more than willing to confirm that Curry has made major strides on that end as well.

"He has become a much smarter defender," said forward Draymond Green, who – along with big man Andrew Bogut – is considered a candidate for the league's Defensive Player of the Year award. "He gets a lot more deflections. He pressures the ball a lot more than he ever has. He comes up with steals, and they're not just playing-the-passing-lane steals. It's getting a deflection, it's taking the big, it's all those things. He's just been phenomenal, man.

"It went from a point where you were hiding him – and my first two years in the league, we kind of hid him – to where now it's 'Hide him from who? For what?' He guards any point guard. That's a huge step he has taken in his game and it has helped our defense take the next step, because he guards his position, which allows Klay to guard his position, which allows (small forward) Harrison (Barnes) to guard his position. And then we're set."

When it comes to the offensive end, Curry – whose top threat for the award is widely believed to be Harden – has been nothing short of spectacular as the leader of this unit that ranks second in the league in offensive rating (109.4 points scored per 100 possessions, behind the Los Angeles Clippers' 109.8). His production on a per-36-minute basis is on par with Harden in some categories (26.3 points per for Curry to 26.8 for Harden; 4.7 rebounds per to 5.5) and ahead of him in several others (8.5 assists per for Curry to 6.8 for Harden; 3.4 turnovers per to 3.9).

In a day and age when a player's efficiency is being valued like never before, it's not even close when it comes to Curry v. Harden (48.7% overall shooting for Curry to 44% for Harden; 44.2% from three-point range to 37.8%; a league-leading 91.4% from the free-throw line for Curry to 86.6% for Harden). Harden is vastly superior when it comes to getting to the line (9.9 attempts per 36 to Curry's 4.7), which helps cut the gap between those two players in true shooting percentage, which takes two-pointers, three-pointers and free throws into account (63.8% for Curry and 60.5% for Harden).

In terms of combining impact and efficiency, he is on the verge of averaging 23-plus points, seven-plus assists, four-plus rebounds per game while shooting 40-plus percent from three-point range for the second time in his career. That mark - according to basketball-reference.com - has only been reached by two others: LeBron James (2012-13) and Larry Bird (1986-87).

Curry's long-range game is on track to go down as the greatest of all time, as he recently broke his own single-season record for three-pointers (281 and counting) and now has three of the top five single-season marks in league history (Ray Allen and Dennis Scott have the others). Curry leads the league in win shares per 48 minutes (.290), a statistic that – as basketball-reference.com describes it – estimates the number of wins contributed by a player per 48 minutes.

As nonsensical as it sounds, the lone critique of Curry's game this season has been, in essence, that the Warriors have won too easily. Their average point-differential of 10.23 is the eighth-largest in league history and the second-largest since 1996-97 Bulls team that Kerr played on, meaning Curry – who has sat out for 17 fourth quarters in all during all those routine routs – hasn't played nearly as many minutes as Harden (32.9 per game compared to 36.9 per for Harden).

But make no mistake, the Warriors are a far worse team when he's not on the floor. The plus-minus point swing of plus-18.9 when Curry is on the floor vs. on the bench is the second-best of the MVP candidates, with Paul leading in that category (plus-19.6), James third (plus-16), Davis fourth (11.2), Harden fifth (plus-8.2) and Westbrook sixth (plus-6.4). And while the Warriors have been healthy in ways that so many others have not, they maximized that health to the hilt. With two games left this season, Golden State (65-15) has already set a new league-record for improvement among teams that won 50-plus games the season before (14 and counting, breaking the record of 13 set by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1966-67 campaign).

It's the kind of good-to-great regular season jump that is rarely seen in the NBA, one that – as Green sees it – made it all that much more impressive that Curry could dominate while sharing so many of the duties.

"(Curry had) another All-Star alongside him (Thompson) who he has to share the ball with, along with me and Bogut averaging seven assists combined, and along with everyone he does, it's phenomenal," Green said. "I think it's hard not to vote for him for MVP just for the fact that he's on the best team in the league. He's the best player on the best team in the league."

The Warriors, it's fair to note, swept the Rockets in four games by an average of 14.7 points. What's more, they have a huge lead on the rest of the Western Conference field that has been deemed one of the toughest of all time. Entering Monday, the San Antonio Spurs (55-26) held the second-best record in the West yet trailed the Warriors by 10 ½ games (the Rockets, for what it's worth, were 11 games back).

As Kerr has no problem acknowledging, this race is much closer than Lacob gives it credit for. But Curry, from this vantage point, is the deserving winner.

"Steph is (one of) the top few players in the entire league at his position defensively, and he's this offensive machine that we've built our whole attack around," Kerr said. "He has had just an incredibly efficient, productive year and led us to this great win total. I think it makes sense to give him the award."