If either Westbrook or Harden are averaging over 4 turnovers a game as Houston Rockets and both guys are still Rockets after game 82 next season then you can mark it down.... we will not win a championship in 2020.
All that matters is team turnovers and PPP. Rockets will excel with WB and Beard handling the ball full time.
per 100 possession TO stats. Not a huge change: Paul: 13.2 career Westbrook: 13.9 career Some other players I looked up for fun: Harden: 5.3 Lin: 4.4 Steph Curry: 4.4 Sidenote: I looked at similarity scores and found this as Westbrook's No.1 similarity comparison: Thru 11 Years Win Shares (Best to Worst) Player Sim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Russell Westbrook 14.0 13.1 11.6 10.6 10.1 9.4 7.9 6.8 6.1 5.2 1.9 Clyde Drexler 91.7 13.2 12.8 12.6 12.4 11.6 10.3 7.5 6.8 6.7 6.0 2.4 It's a sign.... Spoiler: 1995
For fun I looked at Harden's No.1 similarity and he got closest to the Logo. Maybe they should update the NBA logo to harden with his beard. James Harden 16.4 15.4 15.2 15.0 13.3 12.8 12.8 9.3 7.1 4.5 Jerry West 92.7 17.1 16.7 15.2 14.0 12.9 11.7 10.8 9.6 8.1 6.6
Clyde is interesting comparison. Came home and played with his buddy. For that half a season Clyde played the most efficient basketball of his career. However he was traded to a team that was already a champion and was simply replacing a guy (max) that had gone off the chains mentally. The big difference with Clyde was he didn't pile up turnovers by forcing the pass. And therefore he was able to offset his turnovers with steals and offensive rebounds. In Clyde's era scorers would attempt to make a scoring play and they either shot or they passed to a cutter or open shooter before they got to their shot. Once they got into their shot they either took the shot or if they saw they weren't going to get a great look they passed out and the offense reset. In this Lebron Harden Westbrook era with the focus on triple doubles these guys are looking for assists off their drives and scoring attempts. They're not satisfied with making the easy pass back out and resetting the table. They want to either score the ball or make the assist pass. And that's where both Harden and Westbrook get in trouble and their turnovers pile up. And they're not able to offset those turnovers with enough steals and offensive rebounds the way guys like Clyde and MJ did. They're piling up assists. But they've also piled up turnovers. And turnovers are many many times weightier than assists are. Turnovers can only be offset directly 1:1 by steals, offensive fouls drawn, and 2:1 offensive rebounds per turnover.
