Westbrook: "I don't give a f*** about (my stat) line."

Dude is an egomaniac. When your star player is the irrational confidence guy, that's not good.

 

Here's what I think, which I don't consider controversial or contrarian in the least: Westbrook pursuing those defensive rebounds with his teammate's help, while clearly inflating his impact as seen by simplistic box score measures, may nevertheless carry some marginal defensive value in helping to secure the defensive board plus some offensive value by jump-starting their transition offense. It comes at a defensive cost of him being less focused on his defensive assignments and more focused on getting the rebound.

Here's what I think you believe, which I remain agnostic about: The defensive cost of his rebounding pursuit clearly outweighs whatever other benefits the strategy might bring. And his style is motivated exclusively by a desire to pump up his numbers and has nothing to do with him thinking it helps his team win.

The first point interests me, and I'd like to see more analysis that tries to quantify in some way what that trade off might be. It is apparently obvious to most everyone here that the strategy is a net negative. It's not to me.

On the second point, that seems to really bother you but I personally don't really care one way or the other what motivates him.

 

My issue is that he regularly sacrifices playing anything resembling defense in order to grab uncontested rebounds. The end result is more praise for less effort.

 

We can only agree to disagree at this point because we are going into the territory of impression rather than facts. I don't think Capela or Tucker ever purposely box out for Harden or Chris Paul. There might be times when they box out and are out of position to grab the ball while the guards are there to take it. If I had to bet, I would bet that if you asked the other 29 coaches whether they had ever told their players to box out for the PG in order to enhance fast break, all of them would say no.

This is of course possible. I am not sure how plausible it is. It can only be answered by some data to see if the strategy does work for their advantage. You are arguing that Westbrook is so uniquely great that this strategy is only good for a team that has him or someone like him.

 

Um, thats my point. Why statpad to get your rebounds only to 9? The logical explanation is that he just rebounds the ball and it totaled to an average of 9. If he was looking to statpad and make a statement, he'd get the 10th and considering how awful the Cavs team and particularly the bigs have been, and missing Kevin Love for a significant amount of games, its entirely plausible he had to take on more duties this year.

 

I am arguing that if it would work for any PG, then it would have to be Westbrook given his abilities.

I’d also say that I don’t think this is necessarily an explicit dictate from the coach that all players must box out for Russ, but more of an allowance of freedom to maximize what they consider to be Westbrook’s strengths as a player. Adams knows that Westbrook is ready to go after those rebounds, so he focuses more on box outs.

Westbrook’s detractors are suggesting this has to be some team-wide strategy purposely targeted towards increasing his stats. I really doubt that’s what is going on. More likely, in my opinion: Westbrook likes to play a particular way, and the team thinks he’s at his best playing in that manner with that level of freedom. Think of all the high risk passes that MDA allowed Harden to make last year. Was that all part of a strategy to inflate his assists? Doubtful. It was an allowance to give Harden the freedom to impact the game with his creation, with the ugly turnovers being considered an acceptable trade off.

Again, in case you missed it earlier when I linked to it:

 

It is simple, other teams don’t pursue this because it doesn’t win games. Even when you add better players.

 

...look at the rebounding highlights from last night.

 

I just did, and I ran the numbers on points scored on ensuing possession: 17 defensive rebounds, 6.3 seconds on average in ensuing offensive possession, 1.41 PPP.

Anyway, I have no doubt that last night there was special extra motivation for him to grab as many rebounds as possible to get his triple double average, and his teammates were also aware of that. He was gunning for something no player has done in the history of the league.

 

haha - yes, that must have been it. it was a pure PPP move.

Do you expect to see plays like last night with Carmelo Anthony, arms extended, boxing out empty space against Utah in order to exploit this newfound advantage?

if you want to check some numbers...look at Stephen Adams rebounding splits from December to April....

That could be an outlier....but if you refuse to admit the Thunder were laughably stat padding for "I don't give a **** about my line" Russ last night.....you don't belong in this conversation.

 

Well maybe Westbrook gets 9 legitimate rebounds then stat pads 1

 

I have seen stats that show extreme positive returns for him being less aggressive, taking less shots and distributing more that paints him in a much higher light than normal. So I agree, I’d like to see stats that provide evidence about these stat padding situations. But it appears from “recall” he is much more balanced in victories against good teams. Meanwhile, he is “dominate” in losses against good teams. While being “dominate” in wins against crap teams.

I’d love to see the data.

I think, overall, it’s a clear negative.

 

There was clearly stat-padding going on in this game. But the results also indicate another point I've been making -- whatever the motivation may be, Westbrook getting the defensive rebound does have the benefit of driving their ability to score in transition on the ensuing possession. Of course, this is just one game, against a crappy opponent. I wish there was an easy way for me to check the numbers for the entire season.

 

OKC has a higher win % when he gets a triple double. His impact numbers are strong so he's definitely not hurting his team.

I agree he could optimize his game better, but by shooting less, not getting fewer assists and rebounds.

George should probably take the most shots. He's not super efficient either but better than Westbrook

 

They scored 137 points. I think it would be interesting to watch him play a style where he scored under 20 ppg and focused on other things.

 

Have to be careful about the triple double / win % correlation. Triple doubles are easier to come by against bad teams; so are wins.

 

That's true, someone should do a deep dive I guess. But overall his metrics like on/off, RAPM, rpm, etc all show a positive picture.

Maybe he'd be even better if he only got 9 rebounds, but he's already pretty good

 

Just ran across these numbers from last year. We can kill the "his rebounds help the transition offense" talk, at least for when he won MVP.

 

I don’t think one can draw that conclusion from the stats you quoted, which only indicate that Westbrook’s individual efficiency in transition was below average. The key stat would be OKC’s offensive efficiency after he gets a defensive rebound.

Edit:
Was just looking at some numbers on CTG. It provides some interesting stats that shed some more light on this, though it doesn’t directly answer the question of how the Thunder perform off of Westbrook rebounds specifically.

When Westbrook is on the court (5995 possessions), they attempt a transition score in 38.2% of their possessions of live ball defensive rebounds. They add 1.4 points per 100 possessions through transition play. This would rank 2nd and 10-12th, respectively, out of 30 teams.

When Westbrook is off the court (1841 possessions), they attempt a transition score in 21.6% of their possessions off live ball defensive rebounds. They add only 0.4 points per 100 possessions through transition play. This would rank 28th and 28th, respectively, out of 30 teams.

So, Westbrook’s presence clearly helps the Thunder in their ability to exploit transition off live ball rebounds. How does it compare when Westbrook himself gets the board versus someone else? That, I’m not so sure yet.

 

I disagree. If the premise is him getting the ball to key the break, then noting only 30% of those opportunities leads to an assist, and his individual scoring in those situations is in the bottom 3rd of the league, doesn't translate to a great strategy.