On May 14, 2015, before Game 4 of the series between the Warriors and the Rockets, the NBA officially announced the final recipient of this season's regular-season Most Valuable Player Award.
After the news broke, the Warriors' locker room fell silent.
Draymond Green had originally prepared a whole bunch of mocking remarks for Link, but in the end, he could only quietly delete them from his phone.
Even the ever-optimistic Curry hung his head, his face expressionless.
Most of the other Warriors players were in equally listless spirits.
Steve Kerr had never seen the team in such a state. Throughout the entire season, the Warriors' locker-room atmosphere had been superb. Win or lose, dejection was an emotion that simply never appeared in their locker room.
But today, that emotion weighed on the heart of every Warriors player.
Kerr stood in the locker room, momentarily unsure how to comfort his players. Because even he himself was surrounded by disappointment.
Thinking of that, Kerr looked once more at his phone screen. Displayed there was the news of the league's official MVP announcement.
Contrary to most people's expectations, the 2014-15 regular-season MVP was not Curry—it was Link once again!
And Link's vote share in repeating as MVP was not nearly as low as people had imagined.
In the Defensive Player of the Year voting, Leonard's vote share had been less than 2% behind Link's. That was the basis for many Oakland fans' confidence that Curry would win the MVP.
But once the MVP voting percentages were revealed, all Warriors fans were left speechless.
Curry received 35.4% of the vote this time, which was indeed an extremely high number.
Looking across NBA history, players who received around 35% of the vote had basically all won that season's MVP.
When Nash repeated as MVP in