Comparing Stephen Curry's numbers to Derrick Rose's 2010-11 MVP season

Kevin Durant will win this season's MVP honor. Even if LeBron James performs exceptionally in the second half of the season and leads the Miami Heat to a third consecutive title, Durant will probably still win it. The "Slim Reaper" has just been that good.

But over in Oakland, a certain point guard has been posting some numbers that bear a striking resemblance to the numbers that were posted the last time a point guard was named NBA MVP.

The player in question is, of course, Stephen Curry. And the last point guard to be named as the league's MVP was, of course, Derrick Rose in 2010-11.

This should by no means suggest that Curry is worthy of being included in the MVP conversation. He isn't half of the defender that James and Durant are. And for one reason or another, the Golden State Warriors just can't hit the stride they were hoping to hit this season. Some of that obviously falls on Curry, who is the team's natural leader.

But forget the MVP banter for a second. Curry is putting up some of the best numbers of his career this season, averaging career-highs of 24.6 points and 9.0 assists. He's also posting a career-high Player Efficiency Rating of 23.8 (ranks 2nd in the NBA among point guards behind Chris Paul) and his Estimated Wins Added value of 11.8 is unmatched by any point guard this season.

How do those numbers compare to Rose's MVP year?

As you can see, Curry is scoring just as many points as Rose was in 2010-11 at a similarly efficient rate. And his three-point shooting ranks significantly higher.

But the one category where Rose is miles ahead is the EWA, which calculates how many wins a player adds to his team's season total above what a "replacement player" would add.  It's a category that syncs up well with the MVP honor as the award hardly ever goes to a player whose team isn't winning a significant percentage of their games.

In 2010-11, the Chicago Bulls finished first overall in the league with a 62-20 record. Rose's production on the court was obviously a big part of the excellent regular season, evidenced by his EWA of 19.0. Compare that with this year's Golden State Warriors, who sit eighth in the Western Conference and are only one-and-a-half games above the ninth-placed Memphis Grizzlies. The Warriors are on pace to finish the season with a 48-34 record (below their expectations entering the campaign), and while Curry's EWA of 11.8 is certainly impressive, it's clear that the Davidson product isn't "carrying" his team the same way that Rose "carried" the Bulls in 2010-11.

There's also the issue of turnovers for Curry, who leads the league with 204 of them this season. An MVP candidate probably shouldn't lead the NBA in that category, but in 2010-11, Rose ranked fourth with 278. Both Curry and Rose are point guards who get a lot of minutes (when healthy) and enjoy driving to the hoop, so a high number of turnovers is somewhat expected. But to say that Curry's high turnover rate excludes him from the MVP conversation doesn't seem fair when Rose was consistently coughing up the ball three seasons ago.

Again, the glaring difference between the two seasons in question is the EWA and the players' ability to "carry" their team. Curry's having one hell of a season and is posting the same kind of numbers that Rose did in 2010-11. But entering the MVP conversation is tough when your team sits eighth in the West.