I think it's also important to keep in mind how much Washington LOVES John Wall, for philanthropic reasons mainly.
This is what everyone was saying about Chris Paul after we traded him last year. The underlying issue is, and always has been, Harden - he seems to alienate all star his teammates because of the way basketball has to be played to accommodate him. This is the 3rd all-star level player that the Rockets have paired with him who's ended up disgruntled. So yes, the team wasn't going anywhere with Westbrook. And it won't with Wall for the same reasons. Nevertheless, it seems pretty silly to trade the 27/7/7 guy who also provides an immense amount of energy and a different look to the offense for a guy coming off a major injury who hasn't played in two years and who's game was built around athleticism. Even worse when the remaining star's primary weaknesses are exactly what Westbrook balanced out - a lack of energy and relatively little diversity to his game. In theory, Westbrook was the ideal player to counter Harden's weaknesses. The problem is that Harden also demands one specific system that means you can't diversify, because everyone else just has to be a standstill 3 pt shooter for it to work. The problem here wasn't that this couldn't work - Westbrook and Harden worked really well when they were both healthy. Just like Paul and Harden. The problem is that everyone keeps getting disgruntled playing with Harden. And now we've broken the "when healthy" caveat as well.
It wasn't what I was saying, I was saying it was an unmitigated disaster giving up the better player AND picks for what amounts to the basketball version of AIDS. In fact, there were a lot of us saying that.
nope. not everyone. again, people trying put all of us who knew it was a disaster from day 1 in the same boat with the rest of you who are incredibly wrong. NOPE.
I said then that CP3 for WB was a bad trade. And I'll say now that WB for Wall is likewise a bad trade. Trading WB for nothing would've been a TON better.
trading for WB for nothing doesn't do anything for me. I'd rather watch Harden/Wall play together. But you're welcome to prefer Harden and nothing. It's certainly better than seeing westbrick. We can agree there
You are the one using Hyperbole saying Harden refused to help WB and CP3 and when did I not accept criticism of Hardens game? This is the fall back of THAT GUY, all ways trying to paint somebody as a HOF, who can't accept anything bad about Harden. Weak sauce. This coming from the guy who is arguing that WB should be running the offense and Harden spotting up LOL.
No. But lmao @ thinking Westbrook was going to do anything close to that with defenses game planning in the playoffs. Do I need to show you his past 5 playoff performances?
His last playoff performance was far worse than the others. He basically was in pre-seaaon mode in the playoffs. 4 month break and then the bubble starts, he misses almost all the remaining regular season games and then is jumped into the fire with the playoffs. He was in pre-season game shape. I mean at the end of the day Westbrook doesn't have a achilles rupture and Wall does. That's a huge factor in why I'm pretty shaky on this trade. Westbrook is more dependable to actually play and play to the level of a all-star because we've seen him do it recently unlike Wall.
What? The Rockets were statistically better with Harden on and Westbrook off for a majority of the season, and especially the postseason. The only time Westbrook was competent was when we went small those two months, which drastically diminished Harden's production. Westbrook is quite possibly the single worst on-court fit with James Harden.
That's the problem. Wall ruptured his achilles. The odds of him retiring to his all-star form is small. We know Westbrook as of recently can perform at an all-star level. We haven't seen that from Wall for 2 years now.
You know you can say the same about WB. Durant PG Oladipo And when has WB said he was disgruntled with Harden? They were just playing together this summer, both CP3 and Dwight have had issues on multiple teams with multiple players but now its Hardens fault? Westbrook and Harden did not work really well together look at the on off numbers.
To hammer this home further, CP3 "only" managed 18 points per game on 46% shooting and was about a million times better for the Rockets in his first season in Houston. Of course when you ignore raw stats and look at things like Win shares per 48, it would show you that. CP3 had .265 which is flat out amazing....beter than Harden last season even, and Westbrook put up .098 last season, which is slightly worse than Ben McLemore last season. See above, at no point last season was Westbrook anywhere near an "all-star form", he was pretty terrible actually when you look at more than just raw stats.
It's funny that Harden wanted to go to Brooklyn, where KD has the same injury. Harden really knows how to pick 'em, huh?
Rockets were a 6-8 seed with Westbrook . They won’t make playoffs this year now . Most likely harden will be traded in season . This is the sign of a complete rebuild. How you dumb fu cks don’t see this is mind boggling
You asked if he could put up those numbers and even WB could not put up those numbers in the playoffs or the entire year. Recently he **** the bed in the playoffs again. Wall does not have to put up those numbers to be effective or play at an allstar level just look at what Paul did and he was not an allstar. lets see how healthy he can be before we start judging his effectiveness.
tipjar bet the rockets make the playoffs dumb fu ck? 25 posts and some random is trying to call other people on cf's out. lmao
I thought the CP3 trade was atrocious because of the draft capital we gave up and think this trade is reasonable. Swapping out CP3 with Russ would have been a reasonable gamble if we attached solely something along the lines of one lottery protected first and a couple of seconds or something. CP3 dropped off a lot towards the end of his second year here and it was reasonable to think he could be about to fall off a cliff. And when a guy is barking all the time and can't back it up with his play it's tough for the team dynamic. I don't think we knew he finally decided to take his diet and off season conditioning seriously. And honestly if he didn't get traded maybe he would not have.
