Stephen Curry has made a fair share of NBA history over the last year and a half, and he’s still going strong after becoming the first unanimous selection to win the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award in league history.
Tracy McGrady, a seven-time NBA All-Star, appeared on ESPN’s The Jump with Rachel Nichols on Tuesday and offered a perspective on the current state of the league in regards to Curry winning the award for two straight years:
“For him to be the first player to get this unanimously, it just tells you how watered down our league is,” he said. “Think about when [Michael Jordan] played, Shaq, I mean, those guys really played against top-notch competition, more superstars, I think, on more teams than it is in our league today.”
Personally, it feels like Curry has done something particularly impressive — he completely imposed on the LeBron James vs. Kevin Durant debate, which was shaping out to be the debate of the NBA’s top dog by now, and suddenly took over as undoubtedly the league’s most lethal player.
To McGrady’s point, the league is amassing a great number of talented stars, but the bonafide superstars are a short few. Someone like Kawhi Leonard, for example, who received the second-most first place votes behind Curry, is only 24 years old with plenty of time to produce an MVP season.
Other than LeBron, the other stars Curry is competing with are his peers. Curry just got a huge jump on them over the last year and a half. That doesn’t directly speak to a lack of top-notch competition, but rather acknowledges and focuses on the insane evolution of Stephen Curry.