bondom34 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:bondom34 wrote:1. It's really not though. I don't think Harden is a better decision maker at all, he's more TO prone, he's just better at getting to the line. He's not a terribly better shooter, and to this point turns it over more often.
Points per touch is indicating he's more efficient each time he touches the ball which to me would indicate the opposite.
How Westbrook was "groomed" isn't really relevant to how either is playing currently when our only current goal is to measure just that, not more.
2. Yes. I think Westbrook could do similar. I think Curry could. To be totally honest I think most any offensively skilled PG would look pretty similarly amazing under MDA. He's done this with Jeremy Lin, I'm not counting out a high caliber PG from doing more.
As well, I'm more confused because of your use of plus/minus except when they seem to finally favor Westbrook. RPM is favoring him, and I get the box score portion but BPM alone has been shown to have predictive value as well.
1. Houston is running an offense utterly dominated by Harden's primacy, they are doing it with a far-beyond-reckless approach to scoring where Harden is regularly making ultra-long passes on a level I don't think we've ever seen anyone do before, and this is leading to the #1 offense in the league with a TO% that is pretty normal in the NBA.
I don't think it makes sense to say that Harden is turnover prone simply because in the course of this task he personally commits more turnovers than others.
Re: not really a terribly better shooter. Dude, I thought you were the one trying to excuse Westbrook's decision making based on his weaker shooting. To me though it seems like a distinction without difference though here.
Re: groomed irrelevant. Just making a statement about how I see things.
2. Okay, I really don't understand how you say this and your not going nuts at how amazing D'Antoni is then. You think he can run a 115+ ORtg with basically any skilled point guard. That's an insane coaching ability.
Re: BPM is predictive. It's predictive but it has consistent biases. The biases don't make it useless were there no other metrics to use, but there are other metrics.
Re: "You like +/- except when it favors Westbrook", yeah that's where I feel ya. From my perspective I'm saying the same stuff I always said but I understand why it wouldn't seem that way to others.
Alright, home for the weekend
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1. Except Houston's offense runs fine when Harden sits. His primacy is great but it's not like there's a total ineptitude when he takes a breath on the bench. MDA's run offenses with no talent that have been pretty decent.
And calling Harden TO prone because he commits a lot of TOs seems pretty appropriate. He's always done so, but he's doing it even more this year.
I wasn't excusing decision making based on shooting. Both guys comitt a lot of TOs (Harden relatively more via TO percentage), but claiming Harden is more efficient based on a higher TS isn't representing that they're pretty similar shooting this year. Harden's a better shooter but it's not like he's Curry either.
2. I love what MDA is doing. Never said otherwise. He ran a 111 offense with Ray Felton and half a season of Melo, Harden's a vastly better player and this roster has more offensive talent then that one.
Re: BPM/biases. You could say the same about any metric. So does RAPM, yet it seems they're rarely brought up. When we've got RPM and BPM, it's what I'll use.
Re: The last part, I really feel like there's a big bias here and it's why we both struggle with this topic. I know I'm a bit biased but I think you are too on this topic. There's some "ideal" player that doesn't really exist and it's not what Russ does to you. The thing is, he does nearly everything Harden does except draw fouls and if I'm taking one of the two to start a team it's Westbrook, there's certainly no clear gap as to who's the better of the two.
To this point, OKC's roster is at where it is not because they're faiing when Westbrook is on court, but because they're a -11 when he sits. I posted the bench numbers, where they're literally worse than the Nets bench. His backup PG was in Italy a year ago and taken in the mid 50s in the draft a couple years back. Other than that Kanter and Abrines are solid bench options who have obvious defensive limitations, and the rest of the roster might have 2 2way players at most in Oladipo and Adams, with Gibson just added for maybe a 3rd. To add to it the entire year the starting lineup was suffering because of starting a rookie at the PF. The new starting lineup is around a plus 25 net rating.
1. Harden has been a much better outside shooter than Westbrook throughout his career - just not this season. Westbrook has improved his 3PT shooting while Harden's shooting has been declining, so the gap is closed quite a bit if we only look at the 3PT shooting ability. But overall, Harden is still much efficient scorer and not just because of his ability to get to the free throw line.
There is a stat called eFG% which strictly measures players' shooting efficiency (2PT+3PT combined.) It doesn't take into account FTs and if you look at the numbers, Harden is actually pretty good scorer even without the help of FTs. In fact, it's actually Westbrook who begins to look pedestrian once you take away all the free gimmes he accumulates throughout the whole game.
eFG% (League average : 50%)
Harden 53.1%
Westbrook 46.8%
The reason why Harden has far superior TS% despite Westbrook averaging similar free throw attempts and making them at similar rates is because Harden is far better scorer inside the arc (53.4 2PT% vs Westbrook's 45.2 2PT%). In fact, if Harden didn't take so many threes - which hurts any player's overall FG% - the gap in FG% between him and Westbrook would be much bigger than it is now.
In the end, Harden is scoring 29 PPG on 62 TS% and 53 eFG%. That is pretty god damn impressive, and has only been achieved 8 times before in NBA (
https://tinyurl.com/k38vq7g), while putting up near triple-double average himself. Westbrook is doing some great things too, but he's nowhere as efficient as Harden is when it comes to pure scoring.
2. Even if we go by overall impact on the offensive side of the ball, Harden still has better ORPM and OWS. Westbrook has better OBPM, but BPM is notoriously skewed by rebounding figures and collinearity, so I think it's fair to say Harden is having a better offensive season than Westbrook in general.
3. Harden is very turnover prone, but so is Westbrook. FWIW, Harden has slightly better AST/TOV ratio than Russ, but I agree that when it comes to play-making ability, Westbrook is not that far behind. I used to regard Westbrook as a mediocre passer, but he's changed my mind lately.
4. One strong argument for Russ is the sheer impact he's having on his team. While I still think Harden should win the MVP award over Westbrook, OKC does really suck when Westbrook sits out unlike Houston, and that's a fair point to make. But this can't be the sole argument since traditionally MVP award is not necessarily given to the most impactful player in the league. By that measure, Bill Russell or Tim Duncan should have never gotten any, and Harden should've been the MVP over Curry in the 14-15 season. It may be not fair, but team success is and always will be a huge factor in these kinds of awards.
5. One final point : People forget that Harden is just two rebounds per game short from averaging triple-double himself. And given that we're comparing two players in the guard position where rebounding is the least of anyone's concern, and given Westbrook's well-documented tendency to inflate his rebounding numbers, this gap of 2 rebounds per game is nowhere enough to justify the discrepancy in team success between the two. On top of that, Harden has been a much efficient scorer as well as slightly better passer.
Yes, OKC does have worse roster, but not as much as people think. If it weren't for Lou Williams acquisition (who brings similar value as Taj Gibson + McDermott combined IMO), Houston would be in serious trouble right now because guys like Gordon, Ariza, and Dekker have been laying bricks for months since the beginning of the new year. If people still think Eric Gordon is much better than Oladipo, just have a look at their numbers now because they're pretty much identical, and that's with Oladipo being a much better defender.
Morey campaigning. Harden deserves his credit too but this is corny. Really not a good look to me, and I'd say the same of Presti.
