Down the stretch they come

The All-Star break has come and gone, and now teams have turned their focus to jostling for playoff position with approximately twenty games left in the regular season. As much as they would probably deny this, there a select few players who have their eyes on the most prestigious individual regular season award the NBA has to offer: the MVP award. In my opinion, four players have an inside track with one player still sitting on the outside looking in.

The first player is Houston Rockets guard James Harden. Harden leads the league in points per game this season at 27.1 and is shooting 44.7 percent from the field, including 38.1 percent from three point land.The Rockets sit at 41-19 and in third place in the ultra-competitive Western Conference and have played for long stretches without All-Star center Dwight Howard. Harden leads the team in points, assists and steals. My point is that Harden has elevated his game to an MVP caliber this season, and it is amazing that the Rockets are clicking as well as they are without Howard.

The second player is probably the popular pick to win the award. Stephen Curry is averaging 23.9 points per game this season and leads a Warriors team that has simply been the cream of the crop in the entire league. He is shooting 41.2 percent from downtown this year and makes 55 percent of his twos. He leads the league with 2.12 steals per game, and perhaps the most impressive statistic is his player efficiency rating (PER) of 28.10. The PER is a metric created by ESPN analyst John Hollinger to try to encompass a player’s worth and accomplishments on the court in one number. The league average is set every year at 15.0, and Curry is obviously not an average player. 

The third player is someone who has already won four MVP awards. Yes, even though some people may think that LeBron James should step aside from winning, he shushes you while taking the air out of your arena. The Cavaliers’ star is averaging 26.2 points per game and, despite missing some time with injuries, has the Cavs back on track to be a serious contender in the East.He is shooting at around the same clip as his career percentage of 49.6 percent and is averaging 0.3 more assists per game this season in his career. This season he is playing with most of his teammates for the first time, and the fact that his productivity has not dipped is truly masterful.

The fourth player I have to mention is Harden’s old teammate in Oklahoma City -- and it’s not Kevin Durant. Batman has been battling a foot injury for most of the season, and Robin, in the form of Russell Westbrook, has emerged as a serious MVP candidate and a dangerous matchup in the first-round. Westbrook is averaging 26.5 points, 8.1 assists and 6.8 rebounds per game while maintaining a PER of 29.43. The Thunder can lay claim to a 33-27 record and eighth place in the West solely because of Westbrook, who maybe just needed the departure of Reggie Jackson and a Durant injury to showcase just how amazing he is.

Anthony Davis also deserves to be in this conversation, and I predict that he will be ingrained in the MVP debate in the years to come. He can play his way into this elite tier if the Pelicans continue to win and maybe make the playoffs, but similar to Kevin Love, who put up incredible numbers on a non-playoff team, Davis sits on the outside.