Will people perception of Westbrook ever change as far as being selfish????

[Johnny Firpo]

His efficiency is actually pretty good, he's about average, and his on off numbers show a HUGE offensive impact. Its not fooling people into thinking he's great when literally everything indicates he is. Last I checked his ORPM was behind only Curry among PGs.

Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh on him. I still don't think he is great. Not if "great" means Lebron or Durant. Or even Curry or Harden. Those players are significantly better in my opinion. If by great you mean a top 10 player, then sure, he is great. But you can't ignore the Grand Canyon sized gap between his scoring efficiency and of the very elite's. Well, at least I don't think anyone should. And it's not like this is a result of OKC having to rely on him too much, this pretty much falls in line with every single one of his seasons. Low scoring efficiency and high turnover rate. I'm not saying you can't win with him playing like that, but I do think that with him picking his spots better (when Durant is healthy), OKC could be a better team.

[GYK]

yea this season after the media drives a wedge between KD/Westbrook they breakup. After tho he's back to a selfish ball hog.

[bondom34]

His efficiency is actually pretty good, he's about average, and his on off numbers show a HUGE offensive impact. Its not fooling people into thinking he's great when literally everything indicates he is. Last I checked his ORPM was behind only Curry among PGs.

Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh on him. I still don't think he is great. Not if "great" means Lebron or Durant. Or even Curry or Harden. Those players are significantly better in my opinion. If by great you mean a top 10 player, then sure, he is great. But you can't ignore the Grand Canyon sized gap between his scoring efficiency and of the very elite's. Well, at least I don't think anyone should. And it's not like this is a result of OKC having to rely on him too much, this pretty much falls in line with every single one of his seasons. Low scoring efficiency and high turnover rate. I'm not saying you can't win with him playing like that, but I do think that with him picking his spots better (when Durant is healthy), OKC could be a better team.

But you're two criticisms are untrue. His efficiency isn't low, and his turnover rate isn't high.

[LofJ]

^
Not to mention Westbrook is the much better defender between him, Harden, and Curry.

[dautjazz]

Below average scorer? Are you kidding me?

I meant among the elite players. His scoring efficiency is pretty mediocre.

I think 26.2ppg with 20.6 FGA's is above average. He gets 28.7ppg PER36! He's got a lethal offensive weapon with his drive, that alone can't make him mediocre in scoring.

[Johnny Firpo]

But you're two criticisms are untrue. His efficiency isn't low, and his turnover rate isn't high.

53%TS is low for an elite player. Isn't the league average around 54%? All the elite scorers are between 58 and 62%. Even if you take the 58%TS scorers, that's a huge gap, with Curry and Harden, the 7-8% difference is enormous. About the turnover rate, I was thinking about his assist to turnover ratio. He is not in the top 40.

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/playe ... noverRatio

[HotelVitale]

His efficiency is actually pretty good, he's about average, and his on off numbers show a HUGE offensive impact. Its not fooling people into thinking he's great when literally everything indicates he is. Last I checked his ORPM was behind only Curry among PGs.

Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh on him. I still don't think he is great. Not if "great" means Lebron or Durant. Or even Curry or Harden. Those players are significantly better in my opinion. If by great you mean a top 10 player, then sure, he is great. But you can't ignore the Grand Canyon sized gap between his scoring efficiency and of the very elite's. Well, at least I don't think anyone should. And it's not like this is a result of OKC having to rely on him too much, this pretty much falls in line with every single one of his seasons. Low scoring efficiency and high turnover rate. I'm not saying you can't win with him playing like that, but I do think that with him picking his spots better (when Durant is healthy), OKC could be a better team.

But you're two criticisms are untrue. His efficiency isn't low, and his turnover rate isn't high.

Think you two might have crossed definitions of 'efficiency.' Bondom, you're probably using Hollinger's definition, which basically means production + effectiveness and considers being able to create/use possessions part of being efficient. And Firpo, you're using the more colloquial idea of efficiency as effectiveness per possession used.

Westbrook is a god at the Hollinger stuff because he's insanely productive and can create opportunities in his sleep. But he's below average in the latter definition, any way you slice it. That's why he's an interesting player, splits right down the middle of the two ways of measuring offensive impact.

[Johnny Firpo]

I think 26.2ppg with 20.6 FGA's is above average. He gets 28.7ppg PER36! He's got a lethal offensive weapon with his drive, that alone can't make him mediocre in scoring.

Well, if we compare him to the very elite, I think it can. I mean, scoring efficiency is obviously the most important aspect of scoring. Is there even a player in the NBA that averages 23+ on efficiency like that? Maybe Cousins? For that volume, he is simply not efficient enough. I looked up, the only other players in the top 10 that score around 53%TS are Cousins and Anthony, who is already out for the season. Still, I guess you guys are right in that I was harsh.

Would you agree that compared to the very elite scorers, he is average? I think efficiency matters. I mean, was Stackhouse a good scorer? Or even average? Sure, he averaged 30 points per game, but on what efficiency? Some people just don't have shame when it comes to putting up shots, in some circumstances, they are allowed to, regardless of their efficiency. This obviously requires to have a certain pedigree in the NBA.

[Johnny Firpo]

Think you two might have crossed definitions of 'efficiency.' Bondom, you're probably using Hollinger's definition, which basically means production + effectiveness and considers being able to create/use possessions part of being efficient. And Firpo, you're using the more colloquial idea of efficiency as effectiveness per possession.

Westbrook is a god at the Hollinger stuff because he's insanely productive and can create opportunities in his sleep. But he's below average in the latter definition, any way you slice it. That's why he's an interesting player, splits right down the middle of the two ways of measuring offensive impact.

Yes, that would make sense.

[bondom34]

But you're two criticisms are untrue. His efficiency isn't low, and his turnover rate isn't high.

53%TS is low for an elite player. Isn't the league average around 54%? All the elite scorers are between 58 and 62%. Even if you take the 58%TS scorers, that's a huge gap, with Curry and Harden, the 7-8% difference is enormous. About the turnover rate, I was thinking about his assist to turnover ratio. He is not in the top 40.

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/playe ... noverRatio

He's still approximately average efficiency, and last I checked, before yesterday, he was at 54 percent TS. As for assists and TOs, try using percentages of plays per 100 possessions for ratios, they give a different idea of how guys function than raw stats.

Russ has an assist percentage of 47.8, TO of 13.5

For comparison Wall is at 46.3 and 19.

Raw numbers aren't factoring in percentage of possessions a guy has that end in a given outcome. I'd post more examples but I'm on a phone, I'd say check bball ref for more though.

[HotelVitale]

I think 26.2ppg with 20.6 FGA's is above average. He gets 28.7ppg PER36! He's got a lethal offensive weapon with his drive, that alone can't make him mediocre in scoring.

Using only FGA is a weak way of looking at possessions used, straightforward cherry picking in this case. Have to include FTs--two of those are roughly equivalent to a FGA--and TOs at minimum. Westbrook scores a lot on FTs and deserves efficiency credit for that, but you also have to include those as possessions to have any semblance of fairness about how much he scores per attempt. (Also, that's why we have the TS% stat: to save you the time of crunching the numbers of how efficient someone is per attempt.)

[bondom34]

Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh on him. I still don't think he is great. Not if "great" means Lebron or Durant. Or even Curry or Harden. Those players are significantly better in my opinion. If by great you mean a top 10 player, then sure, he is great. But you can't ignore the Grand Canyon sized gap between his scoring efficiency and of the very elite's. Well, at least I don't think anyone should. And it's not like this is a result of OKC having to rely on him too much, this pretty much falls in line with every single one of his seasons. Low scoring efficiency and high turnover rate. I'm not saying you can't win with him playing like that, but I do think that with him picking his spots better (when Durant is healthy), OKC could be a better team.

But you're two criticisms are untrue. His efficiency isn't low, and his turnover rate isn't high.

Think you two might have crossed definitions of 'efficiency.' Bondom, you're probably using Hollinger's definition, which basically means production + effectiveness and considers being able to create/use possessions part of being efficient. And Firpo, you're using the more colloquial idea of efficiency as effectiveness per possession used.

Westbrook is a god at the Hollinger stuff because he's insanely productive and can create opportunities in his sleep. But he's below average in the latter definition, any way you slice it. That's why he's an interesting player, splits right down the middle of the two ways of measuring offensive impact.

No, I'm jus saying he's not at a poor efficiency and the fact that he creates so much for others indicates his value. I'd say to check some of the PC board threads, ElGee had a fantastic breakdown of this at the end of last year. I'll see if I can find it.

[Wonderllama]

Who else should have taken those shots? Waiters? Augustin? Nah man

[MaxRider]

Waiters was on fire last night FWIW.

you didn't watch the game last night?

What are you talking about? Yes, I did. He shot 50% and hit 3 of 4 threes and played good D...

he had a stupid turnover in overtime
passing the ball to no one

[Johnny Firpo]

He's still approximately average efficiency, and last I checked, before yesterday, he was at 54 percent TS. As for assists and TOs, try using percentages of plays per 100 possessions for ratios, they give a different idea of how guys function than raw stats.

Russ has an assist percentage of 47.8, TO of 13.5

For comparison Wall is at 46.3 and 19.

Raw numbers aren't factoring in percentage of possessions a guy has that end in a given outcome. I'd post more examples but I'm on a phone, I'd say check bball ref for more though.

I'm not saying you convinced me, but I feel we're on our way. I'm open to accept the argument about the assist/turnover ratio, although I'm not very high on Wall's passing ability. Still, I guess you could be right about that. Although my argument was kind of this, don't you feel that the team could be better if Westbrook wasn't using so many possessions? Also, what do you think about the TS%? You feel that volume is justified with that efficiency? Call it average. If he is average, shouldn't he use an average number of possessions? Obviously, now he has to take on a bigger role, but I'm assuming Durant plays.

[bondom34]

Found it...

I've spoken on Westbrook over the years but it's certainly been quiet compared to other topics. I think the bashing he gets in completely misguided. To me, it would be very similar to bashing Rose. As far as I can tell, the two main issues against RW are his volume and efficiency (another way of saying "shot selection" or "ball-dominance"/"hoggery").

Let's assume he's a 51-54% TS guy. Like Rose. What makes these guys so effectively offensively is their creation/disruption of the defense. (Let's leave defense alone for a second.) By itself, the disruption can make a good positive offensive player. See Jason Kidd. When you add the benefit of high volume scoring, you potentially add more. Of course, RW isn't a 57-60% guy, so the tendency is to say "Iverson!" But Westbrook would have to be hurting his creation with too many silly shots for this to be a problem, and I don't see evidence for that at all.

This leads to meta-game. This is an issue with guys like Kidd, Rose, Westbrook, even Kobe, etc. It's not necessarily an issue if you can't pass, are a black hole and have no semblance of a floor game. Meta-game is simply the effect that your own shots have on future possessions. Do I think RW has the perfect balance between his own pull-up and something else? No way -- he can pound the ball a lot. But some of his distribution success comes from his own self-creation. If you're saying "he's not Nash," no, Nash basically had perfect balance. But I'd rather have:

20 shots (@ 1.04 pps) that open up 10 Opportunities Created for teammates than
8 shots (@ 1.10 pps) that open up 3 Opportunities Created for teammates

There is an optimal balance curve in that equation and I don't think RW has found it at all. He's still exerting a massive positive force on offense. (You don't have to find this balance perfectly to be great offensively -- Kobe/Michael.)

In addition to that, RW has the ability to self-create, which can come in handy in situations just like in OKC where the team has a poorly run offense and few offensive weapons/structure outside Durant. To me, this is why OKC had no chance last year and why Westbrook sort of stood out for people this year. When the tire hits the pavement, he's an important offensive player. Really important in their case. Is he Chris Paul? Absolutely not.

Interestingly, RAPM has had him as a top offensive player, with this year being his best offensively and defensively. Would he be even better if he shored up his shot selection? Yes. But the current product is really damn good.

[HotelVitale]

He's still approximately average efficiency, and last I checked, before yesterday, he was at 54 percent TS. As for assists and TOs, try using percentages of plays per 100 possessions for ratios, they give a different idea of how guys function than raw stats.
Russ has an assist percentage of 47.8, TO of 13.5
For comparison Wall is at 46.3 and 19.

I'm not saying you convinced me, but I feel we're on our way. I'm open to accept the argument about the assist/turnover ratio, although I'm not very high on Wall's passing ability. Still, I guess you could be right about that..

I really like Russ, but I have to point out that you're picking the only stats that make his asst/TO look better than it is. Westbrook dominates the ball so much that his asst% is inflated and his TO% deflated, even though he doesn't produce that many assists per possession and he turns the ball over quite a bit. Wall shouldn't get penalized for not dominating the ball as much as Russ: the fact is that Wall turns the ball over less per minute played while also dishing out more assists per minute played. And it's not particularly close: Wall posts 14.6 assist to 5.4 TOs per 100 possessions, compared to Russ' 12.4 to 5.9.

Also, you still seem to be missing the point that being 'pretty darn good' at offense doesn't mean being a megastar. Russ is awesome in so many ways but you can't deny that he's not reached the balance of efficiency and volume of guys like Harden, Curry, and Lebron yet. Volume is hugely underrated by a lot of lazy users of advanced stats, but it's not a get out of jail free card. You still need to be posting nice efficiency to qualify as a super elite offensive player, no matter what your volume is.

[bondom34]

He's still approximately average efficiency, and last I checked, before yesterday, he was at 54 percent TS. As for assists and TOs, try using percentages of plays per 100 possessions for ratios, they give a different idea of how guys function than raw stats.

Russ has an assist percentage of 47.8, TO of 13.5

For comparison Wall is at 46.3 and 19.

Raw numbers aren't factoring in percentage of possessions a guy has that end in a given outcome. I'd post more examples but I'm on a phone, I'd say check bball ref for more though.

I'm not saying you convinced me, but I feel we're on our way. I'm open to accept the argument about the assist/turnover ratio, although I'm not very high on Wall's passing ability. Still, I guess you could be right about that. Although my argument was kind of this, don't you feel that the team could be better if Westbrook wasn't using so many possessions? Also, what do you think about the TS%? You feel that volume is justified with that efficiency? Call it average. If he is average, shouldn't he use an average number of possessions? Obviously, now he has to take on a bigger role, but I'm assuming Durant plays.

See my last post .

[bondom34]

He's still approximately average efficiency, and last I checked, before yesterday, he was at 54 percent TS. As for assists and TOs, try using percentages of plays per 100 possessions for ratios, they give a different idea of how guys function than raw stats.
Russ has an assist percentage of 47.8, TO of 13.5
For comparison Wall is at 46.3 and 19.

I'm not saying you convinced me, but I feel we're on our way. I'm open to accept the argument about the assist/turnover ratio, although I'm not very high on Wall's passing ability. Still, I guess you could be right about that..

I really like Russ, but I have to point out that you're picking the only stats that make his asst/TO look better than it is. Westbrook dominates the ball so much that his asst% is inflated and his TO% deflated, even though he doesn't produce that many assists per possession and he turns the ball over quite a bit. Wall shouldn't get penalized for not dominating the ball as much as Russ: the fact is that Wall turns the ball over less per minute played while also dishing out more assists per minute played. And it's not particularly close: Wall posts 14.6 assist to 5.4 TOs per 100 possessions, compared to Russ' 12.4 to 5.9.

Again, see above post. Impact goes beyond box score. Hence his on off numbers which indicate he's elite offensively. He's an MVP caliber player this season.

[HotelVitale]

He's still approximately average efficiency, and last I checked, before yesterday, he was at 54 percent TS. As for assists and TOs, try using percentages of plays per 100 possessions for ratios, they give a different idea of how guys function than raw stats.
Russ has an assist percentage of 47.8, TO of 13.5
For comparison Wall is at 46.3 and 19.

I'm not saying you convinced me, but I feel we're on our way. I'm open to accept the argument about the assist/turnover ratio, although I'm not very high on Wall's passing ability. Still, I guess you could be right about that..

I really like Russ, but I have to point out that you're picking the only stats that make his asst/TO look better than it is. Westbrook dominates the ball so much that his asst% is inflated and his TO% deflated, even though he doesn't produce that many assists per possession and he turns the ball over quite a bit. Wall shouldn't get penalized for not dominating the ball as much as Russ: the fact is that Wall turns the ball over less per minute played while also dishing out more assists per minute played. And it's not particularly close: Wall posts 14.6 assist to 5.4 TOs per 100 possessions, compared to Russ' 12.4 to 5.9.

Again, see above post. Impact goes beyond box score. Hence his on off numbers which indicate he's elite offensively. He's an MVP caliber player this season.

I read your post and I've read and contributed to many similar discussions before. I don't disagree about Russ this year, just nudging you to think beyond making a case for your guy to factoring in both sides of the question. Certain stats and certain analysts would suggest Russ is elite and others wouldn't, and you've chosen to quote only the former. The passage you quoted at length just says 'we shouldn't bash Westbrook' and concludes that 'he's clearly not at CP3's level.' Even that's not trying to make the same case are, i.e. that he's a top shelf offensive player. It's a more interesting question if you're open to both stances (though it might be hard if you're an OKC loyalist).