He has always been "Brodie" (seriously, that's his nickname) just as he will continue to be "Westbrick". Him being a Rocket now doesn't make him any less flawed than when he was a Thunder. He will still make terrible decisions that will drive us up a wall. He will still become detrimentally emotionally. At the same time he will also be super passionate and there will be many games where it will seem like he cannot miss. None of this has changed. Now what HAS changed is that he IS a Rocket now. I am choosing to change my perspectives from criticizing him as an opposing player to thinking of all the ways that this flawed superstar can help our team. It certainly beats sitting around moping about a trade that has already happened.
We hired Turner to replace Jeff B and CP3 was not exactly a good defender last season. Rivers and Ego both actually really stepped up on D last season. There is a reason we were one of the best teams last season after the All-Star break. We just couldn't quite dig ourselves out of the hole we dropped ourselves into early on though.
Man, if I've been able to learn to cheer for the likes of Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen (mistake), Jason Terry, Austin Rivers, Chris Paul then I won't have a problem cheering for Westbrook now that he's a Rocket. Bleed Red, baby!
not to mention the fact that if you leave him open, he may decide to take it all the way to the hole with the clear path and slam it down the opponents throats. I think eventually he will need to develop a better 3 (when he is older) but while he still has his motor and athleticism, he will be just fine
no one is really talking about how wade shot 17%, 26.8% and 25.8% from 3s in the years he won a championship. there was never any chatter about how Miami has a weakness bc of wade's shooting.
Are how during any of LBJ chips, his teams wasnt some gsw offense move the ball around...it was in transition n iso. Fact of the matter is they just had a top 5 player in lbj n 2 allstars. Talent is the key
true, but the 3 ball wasn’t nearly as prominent or important back then in 2006, only 2 teams took over 20 threes a game in 2012, Orlando led the league with 27 attempts a game. having a high usage guy out on the perimeter who couldn’t shoot threes wasn’t as big of a deal also, Wade was an excellent cutter and a lot smarter player than Westbrook...Wade was efficient while being horrible from 3, u can’t say the same for Russ Russ has only had 2 seasons where he was even league average in terms of efficiency, and the last 2 seasons he’s been way below that mark Russ has been below 40% from the field while taking a ridiculous amount of shots the past 3 postseasons...Wade would never
You can look thru the past few years and see he is consistently around the bottom tier. I mean he isn't Ben Simmons bad, but he has a worse catch and shoot percentage than Rubio over the past 3 years based on effective fg%.
I want him to do great as well, but he hasn't shot above 35% with catch and shoot shots since 2014-15. He hasn't often historically exceeded that either. He is terrible at pull up shots as well and he historically takes a lot more of those. He isn't going to become simply a spot up shooter at this point in his career. Defenses will continue to sag off him this year unless he can show he is better than Ricky Rubio type players with shooting.
- - = +.............let's hope combination of 2 chokers (WB, JH) brings out the hidden clutch in them.
He shot 39.1% off catch and shoot just in the playoffs last season. You can't get anymore recent than that. WB has historically gotten better at catch and shoot as the season goes along for whatever reason. I am not expecting him to be a spot up shooter, but that's going to be one of his primary roles when sharing the floor with Harden and Harden has the ball. My point is simply that I am OK with the D sagging off him in that situation, because he has shown he has the ability to hit that shot.
CP did accomplish the reasons we brought him here that you listed in the FIRST YEAR we got him. This past year, however, he could not. Thus, as much as I love me some cp3, the fact that he's officially out of his last stint of his prime makes it an obvious choice to go with a 30yr Westbrook who hasn't lost his ability to draw the gravity of the defense yet. However, if we were comparing them as players, I'd definitely take a 30yr CP3 over a 30 yr old Westbrook. I'd honestly even take the 32/33 year old CP (the one we saw in the 17-18) season over current Westbrook.
This is SUCH an important point to take away. Towards the end of last season, Chris Paul looked washed. Washed. His passing was a bit off, and when we needed him to create, he tended to sniff around to try and flop and draw a foul, or go for his sidestep 3 (which he didn't hit in the playoffs much), or his pullup fade from the elbow (which he could still get). Basically it was EGO carrying the secondary scorer load. Westbrook will make everyone else better to a degree that Paul couldn't due to his explosiveness and aggressive attitude. The only thing that is cause for concern is his awful shooting - apart from that, he is better in every way than CP3
Great, excellent amazing point... Just one question, was offense ever our problem? I get what you're hinting at here, that down the road it COULD be a problem, but last time I checked, it wasn't one. To me, the biggest issues plaguing this team were defense and rebounding. You and I both think WB's boards are more of a lie (he's stealing boards against him own team) and his defense is suspect and inconsistent. Basketball is a two way game, and when defenses get tired their offense suffers for sure. Maybe that's the game plan moving forward, and if that's the case, WB will be amazing.
Not quite sure I understand this post as that's what my post was stating. I stated that CP3 is a better fit next to Harden, but last season he stopped being the player we needed. If I misunderstood the meaning of your post, I apologize!
Overall offense is not an issue in the sense that we score more than enough points over the course of the game. This means the system works. Defense rebounding was the biggest problem on defense, but our offense stagnating completely when Harden couldn't get anything going in parts of the game was a bigger issue IMO. Two seasons ago, CP3 would hit a three or go in with his J-drive for a fade at the elbow to jump start it again. He didn't have that last season so we had to turn to Ego instead. That in my opinion was the much bigger problem. Obviously we want our defensive rebounding woes to go away and a large part of that comes from better decisions of when to switch on D to allow Capela to STAY in the paint. I feel that a large part of that had to do with Jeff B not being their in the beginning to help train up good defensive habits and then after that it was just a turn wheel for role players that we never could quite settle on D. It remains to be seen what kind of defense Turner can cook up with our roster.
