I am in no way trying to say he was good in the lakers series. He wasn't. I am not arguing that he didn't **** up spacing either, he did. You are right about that. I am only arguing that simply removing him from the offense didn't fix the issues. Both the Lakers and Thunder figured out how to guard it without him on the floor. It was better most times without him on the floor, though.
And I’m showing you the numbers say that is exactly the case. Simply remove Westbrook and we go from a terrible offensive team to a really good one. With Westbrook off the floor we scored 111.3 points per 100. With Westbrook on the floor we scored 100.5 points per 100. 10.8 points per 100 better on offense with Westbrook on the bench is a HUGE number. He has very deservedly earned the description as an offense killer over the last hand full of years.
But he wasn't an offense killer for most of this year. If fact, he was great. He didn't even play the majority of the OKC series and our offense wasn't that good. You could make a strong argument that without Westbrook we don't win game 7.
I prefer to believe that Morey will learn from his mistake and incorporate more length into our roster... he built to beat GSW - now he has to build to beat LA going forward...
If we stay small we have ruined Harden's chances....Morey has always fixed his mistakes quickly. Westbrook is the biggest mistake ever. Trade him. DD
That's stupid. Westbrook had some great games with Clint playing on our team. Westbrook scored 30 or more points in 12 of the last 16 games before Clint left. After Clint left he scored 30 or more points in 9 of 25 games. Going small was a mistake. They were just to stubborn to go back. Clint gave us more options inside, like alley oops. That, and he scored, rebounded, and blocked far more than his replacements.
The effective small ball weve seen over the years had nothing to do with Morey and Dantoni's worthless system. Playing small does not mean just being undersized and chucking threes. Small ball requires playmakers from multiple positions, having athletic defenders who can switch onto anyone, players who actually hustle and collectively fight for rebounds despite their size. We have players that cant even dribble, defensively challenged sieves in their mid 30s and a coach whos halftime routine is having his players each chug a gallon of lean
Anyone who thinks we were forced into the capela trade because of westbrook is a dumbass too. Westbrook won mvp with 0 shooting on his team while playing next to steven adams. This moron franchise has been salivating at the thought of throwing out 5 athletically challenged midgets for years now
That's the problem...IF you're going to play small ball, you have to be structured to where they can't do that. Westbrook was supposed to be a driver, the other three needed to be shooters. Not much of any of that happened successfully, consistently once they started doubling Harden.
Agree. Westbrook didn't play well (although he was playing REALLY well at end of regular season), BUT he also wasn't the sole problem. Had he played as well as he had been, would that have helped everyone else out too? Certainly. But does that mean it was all Westbrook's fault? No.
