Our offense is at a 4 year low. Even though Harden is at his best ever. These things don’t add up. Well it does add up when you realize the least efficient player on the team is shooting it 20+ times a game. Severely dragging down our offense from its full potential. Teams are doing their best against us when Westbrook is on the floor. This isn’t a statistical gymnastic thing. This is based off of the actual results that happened in the games. Year after year after year after year after year after year. The best players rate very highly in some key statistics. This gives them a certain degree of relevancy. It is why all the big time writers and people who cover the league reference these numbers. Win shares per 48, net rating, rpm are among some of these key statistics. All these stats once said Westbrook was a really good player that added a ton of value to your team. Since his MVP season all these stats have declined year after year. And this year is the worst one yet. Why is it that this season when Westbrook joined the Houston Rockets that all of these tools we use to evaluate players that have generally been accepted as pretty good are no longer relevant?
You're absolutely right on all this. One thing that has happened this year is that Harden somehow managed to improve on the greatest offensive season in 30 years, and I believe is also even more efficient To an extent I think you can give some credit to the pace adjustment that Westbrook has driven.
I also thought it was a problem that last season Chris Paul plays at the same speed as Harden. There would be plays where Harden gets frustrated/tired, over dribbles, runs down the shot clock and turns it over. Next possession Chris Paul would take the ball, slowly walked it down court, does the exact same thing as Harden, dribble around, runs down the shot clock, can't create a shot and burp up a brick. Westbrook in contrast would just ram it down the lane like the Clippers game in every possession, and it really throws the defense off.
I think Westbrook has lost some athleticism especially when he tries to dunk. His mind is telling him to dunk the ball with authority while his legs/body give out on him. If we had a prime 25 year old Westbrook we would be a 65 win team again.
For the last time I did not reference raptor to say that Rivers or Mclemore are capable of havng the exact same role as Westbrook. it is to show that 2 league minimum players, playing in the role we ask them, are giving us the same amount of total value as Westbrook,a max player, is giving us in the role he is playing. THAT is a huge detriment. Some of us learned a long time ago that process is more important than results. Meaning just looking at the win loss column and saying everything is just peachy is stupid. What team is better? 10-0 with an average margin of victory of +1 point or 8-2 with a margin of victory of +7 points? Which is why just because Harden is heroically willing us to a better record than we probably should have doesn’t mean we can’t dig deeper and see that Westbrook is clearly a problem if we want to continue to win and get better.
Chris Paul was not the same dude that season, so anyone who thinks those situations were the same is lying to themselves. Im not arguing about Westbrook VS Paul, just more about that specific Warriors comparison.
Giving a damn or not there's no alternate universe where we go 41-6 the rest of the season. Those stupid losses to SA, SAC, LAC didn't help.
But again, that's not happening! It is easier for Rivers and McLemore to have a better +/- than Westbrook because of their roles. So you can't come to me and show the RAPTOR of the team and go "Look at Westbrook, he is last!" because that is unfair to Russ as he's being asked to more than everyone else on the team not named Harden. They are not giving the same amount of value as Westbrook. How about this, answer this. If I were to come to you and say "Someone has to tear an ACL this season and it will be between Rivers, McLemore, and Westbrook..." who are you going to choose? Since you are talking about value to a team...do you really believe that their value is just as much as Westbrook that we could lose Westbrook and just hammer right on along as a team? The process is only looked backed upon after the results. After a team loses or wins, that's when the process is questioned. The 10-0 team is better even if their margin of victory is lesser because it likely implies that when it came down to it the team clutched up and locked up. The teams with the best record usually makes it to the finals for a reason. No one goes back retroactively to call championship players bad players because of their stats...I mean, some people do, they say Kobe was an inefficient chucker and blah blah blah...but no one takes those people seriously. The goal is to win, no one should ever forget that, all these stats were designed in order to help GMs build teams that can win.
And why wasn't he the same dude? We all should have expected him to be that same dude, we paid him to be that same dude, he should have been that same dude. I'm not down for any excuses, the Rockets should have won that series. We always talked about how Durant made the Warriors unfair and if they didn't have Durant they wouldn't be better than us...they didn't...then knock us out on our homecourt. Everyone wanted to get rid of CP3 then or blow up the team or we had fleeting hopes that Butler would come save us.
Westbrick was so bad for that 5 minute sequence. If it was me i would've begged the coach to leave me on the bench. For a former MVP that, theoretically should still be in his athletic prime, It was actually embarrassing Missed 2 wideopen dunks. Several ill advised throw in attempts that were stolen. Horrendous mid range shots. NBA 2k would've given him a F.
Our bench, along with House playing 30 minutes a game is the reason for the low scoring. Not Westbrook. Get real!.
Age, also was a down year compared to his previous years. When we payed him, we all expected him to still be the same guy, hell he might be the same guy this year(or at least better than last year). Ironically his best game of the playoffs was that one we lost. We lost because Iguodala made threes he should have missed and we coulndt grab a damn board, it was the defense that killed us. Listen all those games were close, the Spurs beat us without Kawhi, you think the Spurs would replay that series without him and think they would win? No way. Same with Durant, the Warriors would not win without him. Its just those game 6s.....seem to embarrass us. We had a chance and blew it.
Rebounds per game is a useless stat because all teams play at a different pace. A team could be terrible at rebounding but if they played fast enough they could be first in rebounds per game. You need to look at either rebounding percentage, or a pace adjusted stat like rebounds per 100.
Fair enough. Looking at REB%, we went from 28th to 13th year over year. https://stats.nba.com/teams/advanced/?sort=REB_PCT&dir=-1&Season=2019-20&SeasonType=Regular Season
Yep you're right, Westbrook has helped a lot with our rebounding, I wasn't disputing that. Just wanted to point out that we still are not a top rebounding team.
Here are Westbrook's numbers last season and this season so far. 18-19 fga 20.2; fg% .428; 3pa 5.6; 3p% .290; fta 6.2; ft% .656; TS% .501; ppg 22.9; rpg 11.0; apg 10.7; spg 1.9 19-20 fga 21.2; fg% .426; 3pa 4.8; 3p% .235; fta 6.3; ft% .784 TS% .503; ppg 24.1; rpg 7.9; apg 7.0; spg 1.5 Some numbers are suprisingly similar (e.g fg% and TS%). Some numbers (e.g. rebounds and assists) are significantly down.
Not surprising his rebounds are down. He’s not being spoon-fed them and his athleticism has declined. How many missed dunks does he have this year? Like 7? I can’t believe how bad his 3’s are. Even worse than I thought they’d be (somehow), but he at least is still finishing at the rim decently enough when he attacks.
At this point maybe it would be good for him to try out set shots instead of full elevation jumpshots.
