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1 man can't beat a team but the refs sure tried to make that happen tonight when they were ISOing Durant in the 4th. Westbrook plays hero pal + 10 the guy is always looking for his shot first above all else.
That's problem with Durant tbh. Instead of raising his game, he's handing over the reigns to Westbrook on a platter.
1 man can't beat a team but the refs sure tried to make that happen tonight when they were ISOing Durant in the 4th. Westbrook plays hero pal + 10 the guy is always looking for his shot first above all else.
I agree with your other comments about him, but I don't know about this. There's no question he's become a phony (unless his persona his first five years was phony; which I doubt, though I do think it was a slight put on), sickening puke, but 2nd highest on that list is overstating it.
All he said was he could chunk up 30 shot attempts if he wanted and he can. A defender can't really stop someone from shot jacking. He also said that Kawhi and Jack were great defenders, just not the reason he took only thirteen shots. I had no problem with what he said. KD is trying to be too much like Lebron trying to make plays for others and trying to make the right plays, he just doesn't do it as well as Lebron. With Lebron it is almost instinctual whereas KD forces the issue outside the flow of the game.
The Thunder couldn't afford a top notch team around paying 3 young stars. Keeping Durant as a completely irreplaceable talent was a no-brainer but deciding between Westbrook and Harden had to be keeping the front office up at night. It frankly came down to two things, Westbrook being the slightly more freakish athlete at his position and Harden having a poor showing in the finals last year.
I personally think they made the wrong choice. Harden has bloomed in Houston though there isn't a good enough team around him to hope to be compe ors, while Westbrook's questionable mentality is rubbing off on the rest of the thunder. It is also far easier to build around a facilitating team oriented SG than a ball dominating PG especially when you allready have a star who needs touches, in Durant. Harden also appeared far more willing to play Pippen to Durants Jordan (yeah I know the position are reversed but still) than Westbrook is willing to facilitate the spotlight being on someone else. If they would have added a hard defending facilitator in place of Westbrook the thunder would be a beloved run away story for the next few years in the league as it is, Westbrook is going to pull Durant down the ego path to the darkside and that team will become annoying second place es for the next half decade (though this year will be the Big 3's swan song).
Physically and athletically, he is a freak.
Mentally, he is extremely passive and someone of a midget.
This kind of talk after this kind of loss, where he scores more points on less than 1/2 the shots than his chucking point guard, tells me he doesn't know how to demand the ball and take over when necessary. I'm not saying go 6/24 in game 7 of the finals, but dude needs to grow a pair and put that little chimp-teammate in his place if he ever wants to ring.
The problem with that is Westbrook in his own mind is the love child combination of Bryant and Maravich. He deigns to share the ball mainly to get his assists and to show off his passing abilities. To take a team away from him throws him into a sulk where he does little and acts all prima donna. There is no putting him in his proper place till he gets his own head screwed on straight, which will happen in 3 or 4 years as he matures or may never happen at all. This is the sad problem of Westbrick.
Don't disagree but look what Kobe has done to Dwight this year.
All the more reason they should have kept Harden and shipped out chimpy-mc-chucks-alot in they determined they couldn't keep all three.
I think the Thunder would trade Harden for Westbrook. If Westbrook is with Houston I am not sure they would be in playoff contention.
The insult in that quote wasn't directed at the Spurs' defense, it was directed at the Thunder's point guard. If six of Westbrook's shot attempts go to Durant instead this is a completely different game.
He is right when he says he can get any shot he wants. Dude is a crazy capable scorer. If Westbrook ever learns to only take over when it is really needed, the Thunder will be a much better team.
On a side note, in the third quarter there were a couple of possessions when the Thunder got a good defensive switch out of the Spurs that left Neal guarding Durant. But I don't think they scored once off of that - mainly because Durant didn't get the ball often enough. That's the kind of thing OKC will have to do better, and in part it is also on KD to demand the ball more.
If anything Durant's ego is to small. Russell should have been dealt with long ago, imagine a guy on the Lakers, would Kobe tolerate someone but himself jacking up the shots that Russell likes do when the game is on the line? I don't think so. But Durant, while obviously not happy about the situation, keeps tolerating it and not really addressing it.
He said he was trying to get his team involved. Kind of a eyed way of blaming his teammates for the outcome tbh.
Another shot from the "I only look at shot attempts" crowd...smh.
Durant uses 29.7% of his team's possessions this season, and used 26.5% last night.
I frankly don't undestand the max salary mentality by players (and their agents) of teams that have the chance to be contenders.
In this regard, the right way is the one that Miami players have already shown : you take a little less for having the chance to build the best team that's possible.
Neither Lebron nor Wade nor Bosh take the max, and all three of them could have had it from any other team.
The first wrong decision has been made by Durant...if he gave the example by taking less, Westbrook and Harden could have made the same...and OKC could have been in the finals for a decade, with more than a good chance to win it all (and winning is beneficial for players, that can make more money with personal sponsors).
Agreed.
Incidentally, I've always hated the idea of not counting shooting fouls as shot attempts. I understand that it wouldn't be fair to add a shot missed from a bad foul into the shooting percentages, but I've always found it disingenuous to read things like, "He scored 20 points off only 15 shots," only to look at the stat sheet and see a 5-15 night with 10 free throws. It's like people pretend that the player didn't use the possession just because he was fouled at the end.
Two other points:
1) You can get a rough estimate of possessions used as FGA + 0.44*FTA + TO; sometimes ORB is subtracted to reward players who keep possessions alive. There are three situations where a player can get a "free" free throw (a FTA without using a possession): technical fouls, the third shot of a three-shot foul, and an and-1. Myself, I just count 1 FTA as "free" if a player has an odd number of FTA, and 0 or 2 as "free" (depending on who it is and how many FTA they had) if it's an even number. Then divide the rest by two rather than doing 0.44*FTA. This method always comes out as an integer.
2) There should be some value assigned to being able to draw non-shooting fouls, but it's impossible to tease out of the box score.
For the first time I think I saw Kevin Durant lose his composure due to being well defended. The Spurs seemed to force the offense to run through Westbrick and the strategy worked. Westbrick never met a shot he didn't like - especially that half court shot with .18 to go on the shot clock. WTF?!?!? Never ever seen that before.
Since Derek Fisher, Rick Fox, Devean George, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest have all come up big in the clutch, especially in the playoffs, to win rings for Kobe, I'd say he's tolerated it. The question is if Kobe would tolerate someone having more shot attempts than he does during nationally-televised regular season games, and that's a no. Kobe would refuse to come out of the locker room at halftime before he'd allow that.
Here's a better way to look at it; we'll call it "effective field goal percentage". It's simply points per shot attempt, which takes free throws into account, and values a player's ability to draw a shooting foul over a player who, say, throws up a half court shot in anticipation of a foul or doesn't bother to set up the best scorer in the league in favor of his own shot.
Last night, Westbrook averaged just over .9 points per shot attempt, Durant averaged 2.0 points per shot attempt. If Durant had six shots that didn't count because he was fouled, he still had eight fewer shot attempts than Westbrook. I'm struggling to find a stat that disproves how ing ridiculous that is.
Yes, I pretty much do the same thing when looking at box scores. My issue isn't so much with the math behind this as it is with the perception. A player that's taking a lot of foul shots is still using possessions that could go to someone else. Possessions should always be considered above just FGA.
It's true that Westbrook took more shots than Durant. But as I said in the post below this one, I'm more annoyed at the perception of efficiency being based on FGA and not on possessions used and TS%.
Kevin Durant will continue to be passive with guys like Westbrook because he doesn't want to stir trouble but its kind of funny to see him yell at Ibaka for not setting the screen.
I still can't believe they traded away Harden. With the way he's blossomed this year they would be more unstoppable than Miami is right now.
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