Uber athletic doesn't mean jack if you're bad at basketball though. Harold Minor was uber athletic. Russ is bad at basketball. He's a terrible three point shooter. He's a bad jump shooter. He's a mediocre to bad free throw shooter. He's a bad ball handler. He's a bad defender. He's a bad decision maker. Okay. He can rebound. So what? You're basically telling me he's 6'3 Clint Capela except with a sub 40 percent FG percentage and bad defense. We'd crucify Clint at half court on the toyota center floor if he was sub 40 percent FG percentage.
Dudes don't make 8 ALL-NBA teams being bad at basketball. You just compared Russ to a bust too, c'mon man, you know you're taking this too far.
I can’t imagine how depressing it must be to defend an obviously bad player making $40million a year.
Why is it a surprise that a HOF player would be paid the max? It's not depressing at all, the reality is he's been one of the best players in the NBA for the past decade, he deserves a little benefit of the doubt. More than 20 games.
I don't know why no one considers that his mangled fingers are probably affecting his play just a bit? His numbers did take a hit that coincided with getting Paul George, I know he deferred a lot to PG13, basically let him take the mantle of go-to guy. He doesn't even have to be what he was in his prime, half of that is still a rare player that can dominate games and ease the workload for Harden.
THe Raptors literally were not defending him last night. Whoever guarding Westbrick was immediately sent to double Harden after he crossed the half court. I HAVE NEVER in my life seen such blatant disrespect. Westbrick's ego gotta be hurt. They treating him straight up like a scrub.
you are focusing on things that westbrook didn't do that others can potentially do (shoot 3s) but you are ignoring the things that westbrook can do that others cannot, create offense, rebound, push tempo.
I'm watching what's happening on the floor. I don't care what he has previously done. It's irrelevant. I'm watching a very bad basketball player who is putting up the offensive numbers of Corey Brewer in his worst season with the Rockets while shooting three times as many shots. That's what I see.Russell Westbrook himself thinks that Patrick Beverley has fooled everyone into thinking he plays good defense; well I think Russ has fooled everyone into thinking he's still a good basketball player.
I watched too and last night Russ plays put the Rockets up 10 in a crucial 4th quarter against one of the best teams in the NBA. I know, you'll say "Maybe if we had another player..." or "If we had Ariza he could get those rebounds" well, that's impossible to prove. I respond to what I saw too and I can't deny that Westbrook's 4th quarter play put the team up and it was a lead they never gave back. That's what happened. When it was winning time, that's what Russ did. We can talk about what could have happened if so and so played but that ignores what actually did happen. A guy who was having a bad game nuts up and made winning plays to get his team the win on the road against one of the better teams in the NBA. No twisting that. Honestly, that's all I care about in the end. He does that in the play offs, make winning plays when it counts. I don't care what he shoots. Russ actually has pretty good clutch stats too throughout his career. We saw a bit of that last night, just going all out to get a win. Sure, sometimes he does too much, much better than standing around doing nothing and letting Harden do every thing.
So essentially you don’t care about the fact that he is the reason we need heroic play? You are excusing the 99% of bad for the 1% of good. And it took me a minute to look up Westbrook’s career clutch time stats... there is nothing “pretty good” about it. Mid 30s percentage shooter who shoots too much. Cherry picking 1 game last year doesn’t change that.
You do know that's pretty good for clutch stats right? That wasn't one game last year either, read the tweet, more than any other player, Westbrook leads with go ahead buckets. You can't give the man any credit.
Also, for fun. Most of us agreed Chris Paul had taken a major step backwards last year and were terrified of his contract. Most considered him washed. Here are his stats from last year to compare them to Westbrook's this year. CP3: FG%: .419 3P%: .358 EFG%: .508 FT%: .862 RB: 4.6 AST: 8.2 STL: 2.0 BLK: .3 TO: 2.6 PER: 19.7 TS%: .560 USG%: 22.5 OWS: 4.4 DWS: 2.2 WS: 6.6 WS/48: .172 Box +/-: 3.0 VORP: 2.4 Westbrook: FG%: .399 3P%: .216 EFG%: .428 FT%: .737 RB: 8.1 AST: 7.3 STL: 1.5 BLK: .3 TO: 4.5 PER: 15.8 TS%: .477 USG%: 32.2 OWS: -0.2 DWS: 0.8 WS: 0.6 WS/48: 0.44 Box +/-: -0.7 VORP: 0.2 And I want to be clear that I'm comparing Paul's last season here because we were all so disappointed in it. We called him washed. We were freaking out that we had him under contract. People said Westbrook was younger and would be better. But he's not. Across the board he's not. Literally the only thing he's better at is rebounding. That's it. In every single measurable way he's not just inferior to the washed up version of Chris Paul we saw last season but FAR AND AWAY inferior. All we get is a measly 2.7 more rebounds per game from the guard spot to show for vastly inferior offense, defense, assist to turnover, etc etc etc. That +/= in the negative says it all. pps: in the 2015/2016 season when Brewer earned the Sewer moniker, his WS was actually 1.2. Double that of Westbrook.
Again, screw the last minute of the game. He is the fire fighter who is also the arsonist. You don't get to be a hero for putting out the fire when you're the one who started it. And the fire is 7 for 27 with 8 turnovers.
http://www.nbaminer.com/clutch-time-stats/ Basically, Russ has been one of the better clutch players, you guys are always going on about stats, the stats confirm this. Look at who is at the top, Harden, Kyrie, Kahwi, no one would doubt these guys are clutch...except Harden because he's the heel of the NBA...but the stats bear this out. And look who he is above, Dame, whose entire schtick, entire thing, is "Dame Time" and hitting clutch shots. Russ shoots a measly 1% less than super clutch 'Dame Time'.
I also saw in the game when Harden went out, it was only Russ, the team got a 10 point lead. This was when Harden was sitting. I sincerely doubt this standard works for Harden. Because Harden shoots his team out of games too but it's always good when he also shoots his teams back into games.
What's going on, Jay? I'm starting to think Westbrook could roofie your mom and you'd still applaud him provided he intervened before she was actually sexually assaulted. Whereas I'd be like "WTF! YOU ROOFIED MY MOM! I'MA KILL YOU!"
When you are part of a team that finds itself in clutch situations often and take a **** ton of shots you are going to make a lot. That doesn’t make it a good thing. It’s low percentage, high volume. I give him credit. He’s a great rebounder and is really good at creating points for others. And it isn’t making up for all the other bad stuff as evidenced by all the terrible impact and net rating stats. It’s possible to have a couple awesome attributes and still be a bad overall player.
This is going on, I just mentioned a fact and instead people go "What's wrong? HE sucks! Are you blind?" Did I say anything false? I just think you guys are going way too hard on him, I mean you literally compared a HOF player to an NBA bust...
Russ is so bad at basketball that he was able to extract a $40M/year contract from a NBA team. Worse, he was so bad at it that another NBA team traded for that exorbitant contract! Those suits must be fools. Just imagine what some of the BB geniuses here could make with their statistical knowledge of the game!
Yes. Your opinion that he's winning us games is false. And Corey Brewer wasn't an NBA bust. He had a long and productive career. I compared the statistics of someone having a historically bad offensive season to the statistics of someone who had a historically bad offensive season and they were very comparable.
