Maybe not by a lot, but Adams' defense is really good. Clint's defense is at best above average, but it's just not quite there yet. Right before the injury, Clint had had bad stretches of games where he constantly got abused by opposing big men, and his minutes were cut down short to about 20 MPG even when he was healthy. I like Clint a lot, but most of his points come from Harden's lob passes, and still needs to improve upon defensively to be considered an overall good player. That's why I think Adams has the upper hand at this point. OKC's team defense is really good mainly due to Adams and Roberson's elite defense.
Lol this is pretty dumb, the only reason Westbrick is in the conversation is because he has an insanely high usage rate. Most people say it's close because they're just looking at individual stats, if you ignore efficiency than yeah, the stats are close. When you look at efficiency though it's not even close. And OKC's roster is just as good, if not better than Houston's! Are you kidding me? Oladipo and Stephen Adams alone are star quality guys, the Rox only have 1 star quality guy in Gordon. Capela and Harrell only look good because Harden is there to feed them on PNRs, if left to fend for themselves doubtful they even crack 10 pts. There's 2 reasons why the guys in Houston look good, it's because of MDA's system which increases pace which allows for more stats, and Harden. OTH, Westbrick does the opposite, he likes dribbling the air out of the ball and he monopolizes shots so other guys can't make plays on their own. Because Westbrick hogs all the shots he's basically shutting down half of the capabilities of his entire squad, that's why no matter who you get on the team they're gonna suck. If you played pickup ball and you have a ball hog teammate who takes a high number of shots but don't make a lot of them you'll know that it makes playing bball suck, you feel like you're just running around the court pointlessly the entire game. That's what's happening in OKC right now, and that's why they're getting beat down by worse teams. Casual fans who only look at stats don't know any better, but if you spend like 5 mins analyzing the situation you'll know why Harden deserves the MVP more than Westbrick. One makes everyone better while the other dude makes everyone worse, simple as that.
I know he's better. Define "a lot better". Because he's no all-star and Clint is no scrub. Clint scores, rebounds, and blocks shots at a higher rate while turning the ball over less. Compare Clint's third season with Adams' and he blows it out of the water. Adams has a major advantage on defense, but he isn't Mutombo here.
No he doesn't, Westbrick is barely passable as a playmaker, all Steven does for him is be the decoy since in PnRs Westbrick will drive all the way to hole and try to convert a layup. 10.5 assists given his historical usage rating is almost nothing. Notorious ball hogs like Allen Iverson and Starbury had 7.8 assists per game and those guys sucked at playmaking, so if you give them higher usage rating they'll probably come close to Westbrick's 10.5 assists per game. Give Harden Westbrick's usage rate he'll probably get 17 assists a game.
Yeah, but see the problem here is that the numbers don't support this theory of Adam's defense being superior to Clint. You could argue that Adams is a better on ball defender in the post, but he's also not as good of a help defender as Clint is nor can he block shots like Clint does. Like I said, these guys have different qualities but what they do for their respective teams is comparable in terms of overall effect.
Capela is a better shot blocker, but I'm sure you know there is a lot more to defense than just blocking shots. Otherwise, Whiteside would be considered the best defender in this league. For starters, Adams has better DRPM at 1.99 (13th among Centers) vs Clint's 0.81 (47th among Centers) http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/DRPM/position/9 Adams has better STL%, DRtg, and Defensive Win Shares than Capela. http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/adamsst01.html http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/capelca01.html Just all around better defensive numbers. And Adams sacrifices a lot of his rebounds to Russ, so we should also take that into account.
OKC's roster is solid, especially defensively. They are currently 9th in DRtg (we are at 15th), that's pretty good defensive team. And we know Russ is not a good defender, so who's doing all the job? Adams, Roberson, and Oladipo are all good defenders, the first two are probably near elite level.
Most of the defensive numbers are very close or tied other than your DRPM which I'm not even familiar with. DRtg is the same for both players this year, defensive win shares are a bit higher for Adams but he also plays 5 more minutes per game than Capela does. Most of the other stats are very close or in Capela's favor, including many of the offensive ones. Listen, I'm not here to try and discredit Harden or make Westbrook look better. I'm also not here to let people undervalue the job Capela is doing this year and how important he is to our team just to make Harden look better. Dude is a Rockets fan first, player only fan second.
nba.com has better DRtg calculation, and yes the difference is quite large between Adams 101.5 vs Capela 107.8 http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203500/advanced/ http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203991/advanced/ If you are saying Capela is this good independent of Harden, when we know most of Capela's points come from Harden's dimes, and his defense in December has been shaky at best (remember Brooklyn game? Towns going off?), then you are actually undervaluing Harden's impact, not the other way around. Do you also believe that Harrell can be this good, at least offensively, without Harden helping him get buckets?
You need to explain why you think nba.com has a better DRtg calculation. Is it because it furthers your narrative or because you genuinely think its better? Also, I never claimed Capela would be good independent of Harden. I also never mentioned Harrell anywhere in this thread. You seem triggered right now but that wasn't my goal here. All the dude was doing here was calling out a poster who claimed that Adams was a much better player than Capela, and he/she was wrong. Even if we agree that Adams is better he's not been better this year by any significant margin. This will be my final post here because nothing else really needs to be said.
http://stats.nba.com/help/glossary/ DefRtg (Defensive Rating) : This statistic is also more exact than typical Player "possession based" calculations, because we calculate rather than estimate players' possessions on the court. Basketball-reference numbers are based on estimates. http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/ratings.html I agree with you that Adams is not much better than Capela, but is certainly a better overall player, especially defensively. If Capela was that good, we would play him more than just 24 MPG, wouldn't we? In fact, his minutes declined as the season progressed, and that says something. I'm saying on paper, our roster does not look better than OKC's. That's a false narrative concocted by the media, we have no business of being a 27-9 team, if it weren't for Harden and MDA. I give those two guys the utmost credit for this season, our role players have been good, but take Harden out of this roster and I'm not sure we can even make the playoffs.
Preach brother. Even Durant looks so much better now playing with real unselfish guys, instead of Westbrook. Also, Gordon and Anderson never looked this good playing with AD, because AD is kind of a black hole on offense (justifiably tho), and rarely passes out the ball.
Max kellerman is just a guy repeating anything someone said. We all know most of the media hates harden, so when westbrook was playing "better" than harden, westbrook was the MVP. Since westbrook is "declining" a bit, lebron is the clear mvp for kellerman. Just a dumb dude.
Actually Adams has a pretty good jump shot and has much better offensive awareness then then what Clint does. Clint is still developing so he will get there but right now Adams is much better on both sides of the ball. Adams is a top 5 center right now.
Dude Adams Cousins Gasol Jordan Gobert Then there is a toss up between Adams, Drummond, Towns and maybe Dwight.If not top 5 Adams is fringe top 5 and most certainly top 10
You're kidding me right? Gasol Gobert Horford Towns Boogie Drummond Whiteside Dwight Adams So yeah he's 9 or 10.... No way is he top five.
I will say this Harden makes everyone better than the really are. He's the man, theirs not doubt Capela and Harrell are playing over there heads because of James. But that Shouldn't be held against Capela because Lebron and harden make a lot of guys look really good especially role players.
