3 shocking facts about Stephen Curry’s 2015-16 MVP season

2. Most Improved Player Award

The next interesting fact about this season is that Stephen Curry actually had a legit case for winning the NBA’s Most Improved Player of the Year award, which is insane for someone fresh off his first MVP season.

The Most Improved Player award has mostly been reserved for players in their third or fourth season. These players have usually seen an increase in minutes resulting in an increase in production. It is completely unheard of for a reigning MVP to be in the discussion for this award.

To understand how Curry deserved the award, let’s forget that he won the MVP in the previous year. We will look strictly at how he played in both of these seasons.

In 2014-15, Curry averaged 23.8 points, 7.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game while shooting 48.7 percent from the field and hitting an NBA-record (at the time) 286 3-pointers. The Warriors had a 67-15 record and won the NBA championship.

Here is where we can see Curry’s improvements. In the 2015-16 season, he put up 30.1 points, 6.7 assists, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game, increasing his averages in points, rebounds and steals. He also hit 116 more 3-pointers this season while shooting a higher percentage from the field. Furthermore, the Warriors won six more games and made it back to the NBA Finals.

The most important thing to take note of is the fact that Curry played only two more minutes per game in 2015-16 than in the previous year. This means all of his improvements came from Curry actually getting better, not as a result of increased minutes.