Westbrook is overrated. He couldn't win a title with KD, Ibaka, and Harden, and people think he's going to win one with Horford and Smart?
He's not a great shooter. His career FG% is .433/.312
This season it is .424/.343
Compare that to IT's .443/.368 career and .464/383 this season (with similarly limited talent around him)
Take away that massive usage rate and his numbers decline across the board. He doesn't contribute offensively when he's off the ball. It is not a sustainable style of offense.
Durant has made several verbal swipes at Westbrook this season. The fact that he left at all should tell us something about how he regards Westbrook's style.
Their offense is choppy - always has been. The ball does not flow. It is a fatal flaw.
Swap out Westbrook with CP3 on those KD Thunder teams and they win a championship. Westbrook's style hindered them. He is good, but overrated. There is little he could do here to elevate us.
BTW he is also 28, when his athleticism starts slipping in 3-4 years he will be in for a precipitous drop, as his shooting isn't good enough to compensate.
Lol.
Westbrook was what? 23 years old when that OKC team went to the Finals? How many 23 year olds when titles? Dwyane Wade is the only guy I can think of and that was a Pat Riley coached team he played on. Kevin Durant was also on those teams, does that not make him a superstar? Flawed logic. In fact, if Kevin Durant shows up in game 6 in the WCF last season, OKC is back in the Finals.
As far as age, I'd compare Westbrook's freak athleticism to Lebron's - it may age better than people think. Whereas IT takes a beating doing what he does. Little guys already tend not to age well. 3-4 years later, you can make the same argument about IT.
My thinking is this: if both Westbrook and IT hung it up right now and never played another second of basketball, Westbrook is likely a first ballot Hall of Famer.
lol, you somehow missed all the points I was trying to make, and failed to refute them. My primary point is not that IT is better than Westbrook. My point is that Westbrook is overrated by the media and by fans on this site.
1. KD has taken swipes at Westbrook and clearly thought he wouldn't win a title there with him. Do you think Westbrook would win a title here with a lesser roster than what OKC had? KD wasted several years of his early prime with Westbrook and decided to cut his losses. Good for him. BTW it is rumored KD would have come here to play for us with IT if the Warriors had won the finals last year.
2. Westbrook is not as efficient a shooter as most true superstars. Fact. IT, despite getting far less fanfare, puts up significantly better percentages. This is a big problem for a guy who struggles playing off the ball. If he isn't scoring he doesn't help the team much on offense. And as his athleticism inevitably declines, this will make him that much more inefficient.
3. OKC has the 6th-worst assist rate in the NBA. last year it was 7th-worst. The year before it was 2nd-worst. The OKC offense is choppy, partially because Westbrook plays too much hero ball and has the ball in his hands almost all of the time. This is not a recipe for success. Watch the Houston Rockets - who have a very flawed roster and were projected to win only 41.5 games by Vegas - move the ball around far better than OKC does. Harden is just a much smarter player and a more efficient scorer. We've seen how the ball flies around in Golden State with KD (GS is top-2 in ast% in the NBA over the last 3 years), which is in stark contrast to his years in OKC.
4. His insane usage rate of 41.7% is by far the highest in NBA history. He's led the league in USG% 2 of the last 3 years, which also happen to be 2 of the three highest NBA usage rates of all-time. Compare that with CP3's career 24% rate. The highest season CP3 has ever had was 27.1% last year. Say what you want about the Clips, but the ball does move around there decently well.
Looking at a guy like Westbrook who doesn't shoot the ball with great efficiency, this is a problem for the Thunder. You can point to his assist totals as a sign that he does make his team good, and yet the team % is still poor, and they visibly struggle to form any cohesive offense. The usage% boosts his points and assists while partially masking serious problems under the proverbial hood. The high usage rate will also likely contribute to major wear and tear on a body that already relies too much on raw athleticism.
Apologists might point to the fact that OKC's roster this year isn't great and that Russ
needs to dominate the ball. The problem with that is that this has been a pattern for many years now, and that there are teams with similar supporting casts who move the ball much better (like the C's, who are 2nd in assist% this year). Either he is uncoachable and doesn't want to get his teammates involved, or he is simply unable to read the floor the way a Steve Nash or a Harden or a CP3 does.
Either way, the Thunder have never reached their potential, and I fear those problems might follow Westbrook wherever he goes.
Topic: HYPOTHETICALLY, Is Westbrook Worth BKN Picks + Chance At Max FA? (Read 6082 times)