For the first few months of the season, it was almost a foregone conclusion Stephen Curry would win the NBA MVP award for 2021-22.

Curry and the Warriors got off to a blistering start and lit the NBA world on fire with a barrage of 3-pointers and wins. The Warriors were 18-2 as November wrapped up, and Curry was on the cusp of breaking Ray Allen’s career 3-point record. Curry was the odds-on favorite to win MVP at that point.

That’s when things started to go off the rails. Curry entered a home game against Portland 15 treys from tying the record and forced 12 attempts in the first half alone. He was never really in rhythm, and the pursuit of the record seemed to throw Curry off his game and put his shooting into a funk. And so began a months-long slump, one of the worst of Curry’s career, that dropped him down the MVP ladder, and out of the race for some.

But the odds have gone too far the other direction. I still believe Curry is live to win this year’s NBA MVP. With his MVP odds available at 15/2 at BetMGM, now is the time to bet on Curry.

There are three reasons I’m investing in Curry right now.

His shooting slump may finally be behind him: It’s no secret Curry went ice cold for a while. Starting with that Blazers game, he plummeted to 33 percent on 3s over his next 15 games.

The final five games of that stretch were especially ice cold. From Jan. 3-13, Curry scored 18.0 ppg on under 32 percent from the field, including an ugly 2-of-9 3s per game, just 22 percent. Just nine times all season has Curry made two or fewer 3s in a game — and four of those came in that five-game stretch.

That was the nadir of Curry’s season, and it’s no coincidence that the final three games were the start of Draymond Green’s long injury absence. But that was a month ago, and Curry and the Warriors have adjusted and learned how to play and win without Green.

His MVP odds don’t make sense vs. other Warriors odds: There’s a weird Warriors dissonance happening around sportsbooks right now. They all seem to agree that Curry has dropped out of the MVP favorites. He’s outside the top three at every major book, and by a decent margin. But the books haven’t given up on the Warriors yet.

At BetMGM, the Warriors 2/1 are co-favorites with the Suns to win the Pacific Division. That’s effectively 2/1 to finish with the best record in the entire NBA, since it means passing the Suns. And if the Warriors pass the Suns and finish with the league’s best record, do you really think Curry wouldn’t win MVP?

He still fits the typical historical MVP voting pattern: If you look back at NBA MVP voting over the years, an obvious pattern emerges. Voters consistently give their vote to the candidate who fits the best-player-on-the-best-team criterion above all else.

It’s not always the best team. Sometimes that team has a pair of candidates splitting the vote or their success is considered a team effort without an MVP — the Suns fall into both categories. Other times, the team is too talented, such as the Warriors when they had Kevin Durant. But in a majority of NBA seasons, the MVP award goes to a player on a top-two seed who was by far the best on his team.

Our most likely best-player-best-team candidate other than Curry is still Giannis Antetokounmpo. But the Bucks were the 3-seed entering Thursday, will be short two starters for the foreseeable future and don’t seem to have any designs on pushing themselves until the playoffs.