J.R. Smith would vote LeBron James, Russell Westbrook as MVP ahead of Stephen Curry

Perhaps it is not surprising that J.R. Smith thinks his teammate, LeBron James, should have won the NBA MVP award. More surprising is the fact that he backed a Western Conference guard not named Stephen Curry as well.

Smith was asked who he would vote for in the race for the players’ MVP award, and he named two names, neither of which were Curry’s.

“Other than LeBron, I don’t really know who else to vote for,” Smith said Thursday, via USA Today’s Michael Singer. “I mean somebody who does everything for a team, whether it’s scoring, getting stops, rebounds, steals, blocked shots. There’s not more of a complete player, so I don’t see how he couldn’t be the most valuable.”

When asked who he would pick if he had to select a player who wasn’t on his team, Smith offered a surprising answer.

“If I couldn’t vote for somebody on my own team I’d probably vote for a guy like Russ (Westbrook).” Smith said. “I mean, he’s energy, effort, consistently, got the total package. You gotta go for a guy like that.”

It took some prompting for Smith to assess Curry.

“Would he be in my Top-5? I mean, yeah, he’s very valuable to the team, to what they do,” Smith said of Curry. “If you take him out of the equation I think they’re a totally different team, but I mean he would definitely be in there. Absolutely.”

Curry, of course, has won back-to-back MVPs, the most recent one being unanimous.

Maybe Smith is just trying to get into Curry’s head. The Warriors guard has already had a poor Finals, but whether the chatter is a factor in that is disputable. The last time this happened, Curry talked about tuning it out. He’ll have to do that again with his team facing a significant Game 4 on Friday.