Stephen Curry’s MVP award proves that it’s hard to predict NBA stardom
Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
On Monday, Stephen Curry stood up at the podium to accept his 2015 NBA Most Valuable Player Award from the league, and proceeded to thank his family, his team, his coaches, and the entire Golden State Warriors franchise for the role they played in making it happen.
Curry did what typical NBA MVPs do. It was a nice, heartfelt speech given by the most electric basketball player on the planet to the very media members that voted him into that position. While James Harden did what he could to put himself into the conversation, this has been Curry’s award to lose since our calendars hit 2015. We knew this moment was coming.
Six years ago, though, this wasn’t a reality. Not in the eyes of scouts, at least.
Curry, who lit up box scores as a baby-faced sophomore at Davidson, entered the 2009 NBA Draft with much confusion surrounding his abilities. While he had a far less efficient season as a junior thanks to an increased workload, every human on the face of the Earth knew Curry had a pure shooting form, saw his uncanny scoring ability, and understood that he came from an NBA pedigree. Despite all of these factors, however, league general managers were left wondering if it would carry over to the next level.
We were only three years removed from Adam Morrison making us second guess what a productive basketball players looks like, and J.J. Reddick hadn’t found his footing in the league just yet, so elite college scorers weren’t appearing as valuable as they once had been. They were being asked for more — “Sure, you can score at will, but is that it?”
If you look hard enough at any player coming out of college, you’ll find some glaring weaknesses. Maybe Reddick and Morrison’s early failures were weighing heavily on the minds of front offices and scouts at the time, but Curry’s otherworldly scoring ability simply wasn’t enough to convince the masses. NBADraft.net had the following scouting report on Curry in 2009:
"Will have to adjust to not being a volume shooter which could have an effect on his effectiveness … Doesn’t like when defenses are too physical with him … Not a great finisher around the basket due to his size and physical attributes … Makes some silly mistakes at the PG position. Needs to add some muscles to his upper body, but appears as though he’ll always be skinny …"
Bleacher Report also had something to say about Curry coming out of college:
"He probably is never going to end up being a star in the league because of a lack of explosiveness (meaning he will be a huge defensive liability). He should be able to hang around the league because of the all-around offensive package he brings to the table."
Even Chad Ford was hearing some doubts from his numerous contacts on Curry:
"Some scouts don’t believe he’s a point guard. Others worry about his diminutive stature or his lack of explosiveness as an athlete. Still others fret about some of Curry’s disappearing acts against quality teams."
Don’t make too much of the contents of these blurbs, though; this isn’t a hit piece on how blind scouts are to “true talent” and how they are overly scared of undersized talent. No, what these tidbits should tell you, more than anything, is that predicting the professional futures of college basketball players is really, really hard. The art of scouting is not foolproof. While some discrepancies may appear large in a player’s game out of college, it can very easily be ironed out with some proper coaching or simply by osmosis after playing some NBA seasons.
Curry is not the first MVP who’s had his skills questioned coming out of college, and he certainly won’t be the last. Even with the increase of analytics, there is no sure-fire way to predict a player’s trajectory in the league. In fact, it appears that the only ones who knew that Curry was bound to be a star in the NBA were the sad New York Knick fans who were one pick too late in getting him.
It’s funny how things work out.