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Stein's Most Valuable Player: Russell Westbrook

Three more wins.

Had the Oklahoma City Thunder squeezed just three more W's out of the past 170 days, our suspicion here at Stein Line HQ is that the 2016-17 MVP race would be -- if not quite a rerun of last season’s unprecedented unanimous coronation of Stephen Curry -- firmly in the grasp of Russell Westbrook.

But they didn’t.

So it isn’t.

Media members have been voting on the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award since the 1980-81 season. The last time media types awarded the Maurice Podoloff Trophy to a player from a sub-50-win team in a full NBA season came in just their second year of voting.