Style Wars Define the Most Compelling MVP Race in Ages

Steph vs. Russ vs. The Beard. No matter who wins the MVP, nobody should complain. They are all equally qualified — it just depends what style you like best.

LeBron James doesn’t mean anything. Not anymore. He bounced from Cleveland to South Beach and back, and he remains the best basketball player on earth, but after a journey that began with him being a teenage phenom on the cover of Sports Illustrated, he is now just a basketball player. His significance off the court — in terms of marketing and player power dynamics — remains enormous. When it comes to actually playing the game, however, he is now just a master.

That’s not the case for Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook, or James Harden.

These three are the frontrunners to win the NBA MVP award this year season, and each brings more than himself to the conversation. They bring an aesthetic.

Curry is adding flair to the court in a way that few since Magic Johnson have. He is the ultimate good guy who nobody can root against. The common fan is wowed and only sees the wonder. He is the son of an NBA role player and has spent a lifetime perfecting a jumpshot. Now, his place as the best shooter in the game is presumed and the question is whether or not he’s the league’s most valuable player.

Watching him do the incredible, it’s hard to want to vote for anyone else. His passing and showmanship have become a game within the game. Twitter waits with anticipation for the next must-watch Vines and GIFs that bring intrigue during a historic season in which the Golden State Warriors run away with the Western Conference lead.

Really, he is out here just messing around.

But it isn’t just the silly passes, playground moves, and  circus shots. This isn’t showmanship for the sake of showmanship. 

Steph Curry has simply reached a level of confidence and in-game creativity that we haven’t seen in a long, long time, and this allows him to make the incredible become routine. The newly retired Steve Nash used to amaze with the ball, Jason Kidd made full-court bounce passes look pedestrian, and Chris Paul’s authoritarian control of the rock may be unprecedented. But what Curry is doing is different.

He so supremely believes in his ability out there that he doing stuff nobody else would dare try.

Just look at this foolishness? Who does that?

Even more glorious was this 3-pointer that he just knew was going in.

Not since the days of Gilbert Arenas have we seen a player so out of his mind. Some have tried to mimic that season-long zone that Agent Zero was in, but this is That 2.0, and it’s all the better because, unlike Arenas, Curry’s on-court antics are more genuine and more mind blowing.

It doesn’t feel like Curry is going out there to put on a show.

It just happens.

Another thing that “just happens” is Russell Westbrook — but in an altogether different, more destructive way. Like a landslide.

There has never been anything like Russell Westbrook on a basketball court. We can’t really use the past to describe him. Yes, we can try. We can come up with implausible hybrids or hypotheticals. Like, Russell Westbrook is what would happen if Sixers-era Charles Barkley and Latrell Sprewell had a kid. Or if the K-T extinction asteroid could dunk. Or if 36 Chambers was a person. But nothing can suffice.

Russell Westbrook is Russell Westbrook, and he is Category 9 hurricane-ing his way through this season, leaving nothing in his wake but wreckage and awe. If the Thunder miss the playoffs, does that deserve a trophy? Maybe. Maybe not. It probably depends on your definition of “most valuable.” The better question is whether or not his tyranny deserves a war crimes tribunal at the Hague.

With nine triple doubles this season — and that’s after the NBA vacated one he notched this weekend by overturning a rebound — his statistics have become Monopoly money. His nightly box-score numbers are so absurd that his 36-point, 14-assist, 10-rebound performance in the Thunder’s key win over the Atlanta Hawks last week didn’t even feel special.

What makes this all the more wonderful is that Westbrook started the season with injury problems. In a season that has featured more stars being sidelined than any in recent memory, it looked like Westbrook might be among them.

He broke his hand in Oklahoma City’s second game of the year and missed the next 14 games. A hand fracture isn’t something that usually carries long-term career implications, but given Westbrook’s knee surgery last year and his playing similarities with Derrick Rose, the story was starting to look scary.

Instead, he has put together the most explosive season I can remember. You probably have to talk about prime-Shaq or LeBron for comparison — and Westbrook is 6’3″, 200 pounds.

He isn’t even playing basketball, to be honest. He’s walking around the court offended that mortals bothered to show up alongside him.

It is nearly impossible to contrast that fury against the flair of Curry — or the executioner-level detachment James Harden has for putting the ball in the hoop.

He has put up equally sinister numbers all season, without missing any time to injury, but his approach couldn’t feel more different than Curry’s theatrics and Westbrook’s rage.

James Harden leads the league in minutes, shots, and free throws, and with each minute, each shot, and each free throw he displays a calculated method to increase his point total.

It works better than any other style.

Harden has scored more points than anybody — by a lot.

Scoring isn’t everything, but regardless of what your defense-wins-championships friends might tell you, it is the most important thing. And Harden has scored 251 points more than anyone else in the league.

The way he scores is as important as the total, however, and it is what makes him stand so far apart from Curry and Westbrook. And not just them — everyone. Nobody plays like James Harden, and his steady diet of 3s and free throws has made him a polarizing figure.

It didn’t help that he was routinely marooned in social media last year for his defensive failings, and now everyone has an almost-moral stance on how Harden approaches the game (even though his effort and technique on defense is much improved this season).

To his supporters, he is lethal, north/south efficiency: unstoppable going to the rim and impossible to leave behind the arc. He scores points easier than anyone in the NBA.

To his detractors, he has found a glitch in the system and relentlessly exploits it in a way that is no fun to watch. He is the anti-Curry, flailing for calls and gumming up a beautiful game.

For opposing coaches, the aesthetic question doesn’t much matter.

Pick your poison.

With Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden, the NBA has three incredible scorers and elite playmakers who are showing just how many ways there are to play this game — and become unguardable while doing so.

LeBron James redefined our expectations about just how many things one player can do on the court and Kevin Durant has taken scoring prowess to a new level. But these three are putting their individual marks on the association. And each is excelling in ways that make you reconsider the impossible with their own never-seen-before style.

But there is no way to say which one is playing the game better right now.

It just comes down to preference.

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