For months, the race for the NBA's most valuable player award has been misreported.
Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry has been anointed the favorite to win MVP, based on his being the proverbial "best player on the best team." That's an accurate description, certainly, but also one that sells Curry short.
Best player on the best team makes it sound like the Warriors' success is driving Curry's MVP candidacy. In truth, it's the other way around. Curry has been the best player in the NBA this season. That's why Golden State has the NBA's best record, and that -- not the team's record -- is why Curry deserves MVP.
Historic scoring for a guard
In the past, I've used a statistic called adjusted true shooting percentage (aTS) to measure how well NBA players score by combining their usage rates (the percentage of the team's plays they finish with a shot attempt, trip to the free throw line or turnover) and their true shooting percentages (TS, which measures how efficient players are with their shooting).
The past season, LeBron James and Kevin Durant had the best adjusted true shooting percentages since the ABA-NBA merger. Curry can't quite match those marks, but he's tops in the NBA this season and posting the 11th-best season in post-merger history.
You'll notice something those players have in common, besides Curry: They're all frontcourt players. Curry's adjusted true shooting percentage will be the best ever for a guard, surpassing Michael Jordan's .674 mark in 1989.
Not coincidentally, the top 10 all got to the free throw line on a regular basis; they finished at least 13 percent of plays with a shot attempt, pair of free throws or turnovers. Curry's plays end in a trip to the free throw line less than nine percent of the time, which means he's more reliant on making shots than anyone else who has ever been so efficient.
James Harden, Curry's main competition for MVP, has carried a heavier load on offense (31.5 percent usage) with somewhat less efficiency (.605 TS percentage). As a result, his adjusted true shooting percentage of .663 ranks second in the league behind Curry's. Nobody else has an adjusted true shooting percentage better than .630.
Curry's impact on the Warriors
Harden proponents are likely to start their case with the quality of his supporting cast. Harden's Houston Rockets rank in the top 10 in games, minutes and wins above replacement player (WARP) lost to injuries, according to my tracking. Their second-best player, center Dwight Howard, has been limited to just 40 games. By contrast, the Warriors could have the Coach of the Year (Steve Kerr) and the Defensive Player of the Year (Draymond Green), and backcourt-mate Klay Thompson joined Curry on the Western Conference All-Star team.
Yet remarkably, with Curry on the bench this season, Golden State has outscored opponents by just 0.6 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com/stats. It's only with Curry on the court that the Warriors become a juggernaut, outscoring opponents by a league-best 16.5 points per 100 possessions. That net difference -- plus-15.9 points per 100 possessions -- is not only better than Harden's (plus-8.4 net plus-minus), as NBA.com's John Schuhmann noted last week, but it is also the third-largest in the league, behind two stars on teams with woeful benches (Chris Paul of the L.A. Clippers and LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers).
The comparison of the impacts Curry and Harden have offensively, which SI.com's Ben Golliver graphed on Twitter last week using statistics from NBA.com/stats, is fascinating. Without Harden, the Rockets' offensive rating (93.8 points per 100 possessions) would be better than that of only the Philadelphia 76ers. When Harden plays, the Rockets' offense is tied for fourth in the league (107.5 offensive rating). Golden State's 100.1 offensive rating without Curry is slightly better; it would rank 26th in the NBA. But Curry's presence boosts the Warriors' offensive rating to 113.8 points per 100 possessions -- four points better than the Clippers' league-leading 109.8. The net difference of 13.7 points per 100 possessions is the same either way.
Looking just at on-court and off-court ratings slightly overstates Curry's value because it doesn't account for the quality of the starters who play with him more frequently than they play with the second unit. But ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) is designed for that task, and it has Curry (plus-8.9) rated ahead of Harden (plus-8.3) and atop the league.
In a real sense then, Curry is carrying Golden State just as much as Harden has carried Houston. Rather than pushing his team from subpar to very good, he has taken the Warriors from OK to historically elite (they'll become the eighth NBA team to outscore opponents by double-figures per game if they're plus-3 points or better over their final two games).
That's why Curry is the MVP. He's been the best player, full stop, in the NBA this season.
News and notes
• Quickly, the rest of my hypothetical MVP ballot. Based on the case I laid out a couple weeks ago, I would have Paul third. After Curry and Harden, he's the only player in the group of MVP candidates who will play at least 70 games this season, and he has a chance to play all 82. In terms of value, that gives him an edge.
Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis are grouped closely together in my mind. Both have missed about a fifth of the season but have been spectacular when they've played. However, Davis has played more minutes per game. That and his clutch heroics, as detailed by Tom Haberstroh, put him fourth and Westbrook fifth. That leaves James as the odd candidate out. James has been terrific over the second half of the season, but he missed nearly as much time as Davis and Westbrook and hasn't been as effective over the course of the season. The four-time MVP, incredibly, doesn't merit a spot on the ballot this season.
• Westbrook put up another Herculean effort Sunday night in scoring a career-high 54 points at Indiana. Because Westbrook needed 43 shots -- the most by a single player since Kobe Bryant in 2008 and tied for eighth most in the NBA over the past three decades, per Basketball-Reference.com -- to get there and missed four free throw attempts, the performance only rated as his third best of the season, by John Hollinger's "Game Score" (36.9). Still, the fixation on Westbrook's field goal attempts shouldn't overshadow that his performance was one of the 25 best Game Scores of the season.
Alas, because other Oklahoma City players shot 4-of-17 from the free throw line and the Thunder allowed 10 Pacers 3-pointers, Westbrook's performance came in a losing effort. With the New Orleans Pelicans also losing in Houston, the battle for eighth in the West remains tied with two games to play. Because Westbrook was whistled for his 16th technical foul of the season in the fourth quarter, unless the NBA rescinds the technical, he will sit out Monday night's game against the Portland Trail Blazers. An Oklahoma City loss and a New Orleans win at Minnesota would eliminate the Thunder and assure the Pelicans the eighth seed.
• Indiana's win also moved the Pacers into a tie for eighth in the East with the Brooklyn Nets, who lost earlier Sunday at Milwaukee. The Bucks have clinched the sixth spot in the East, which leaves four teams still battling for seventh and eighth. The Boston Celtics, who beat a resting Cleveland Cavaliers squad, are a game up in seventh. The Miami Heat, two games back of Brooklyn and Indiana, need to win out and have the Nets and Pacers lose out to reach the postseason. Most likely, eighth will come down to Brooklyn or Indiana. The Nets hold the tiebreaker, should the teams finish with the same record in their last two games.
• Out West, the doomsday scenario of a four-team tie remains in play. The Houston Rockets, L.A. Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies and San Antonio Spurs are all sitting on 26 losses. Those teams will mostly be favored in their remaining games, with the exception of Memphis, which visits Golden State on Monday. If the Grizzlies win that game, it's time to start brushing up on four-team tiebreakers, which would leave San Antonio as the Southwest division champ and No. 2 seed.
• Weekly top five: Best NBA prospects at Saturday's Nike Hoops Summit
1. Skal Labissiere, F/C, Haiti (committed to Kentucky)
2. Ben Simmons, F, Australia (committed to LSU)
3. Malik Newman, G, USA (uncommitted)
4. Zhou Qi, C, China
5. Jamal Murray, G, Canada (currently class of 2016)
Honorable mention: Thon Maker, Luke Kennard, Jaylen Brown, Nedim Buza, Brandon Ingram
Follow Kevin Pelton on Twitter @kpelton.