2017 Westbrook vs. 2019 Giannis

[theonlyclutch]

Westbrook easily, he could do more offensively. Giannis can be slowed down in half court.

If it was so easy to slow down Giannis in the half court the Bucks wouldn't be leading the league in SRS.

[SlowPaced]

Giannis and it's not close. Are we really going to pretend that Westbrook wasn't an extremely me-first stat-focused player in 2017? Come on FAM, 2017 wasn't that long ago...

Are we really going to pretend that Westbrook was an extremely-me-first stat-focused player in 2017?

[Top10alltime]

Westbrook easily. Giannis just sucks.

[ShotCreator]

Westbrook easily, he could do more offensively. Giannis can be slowed down in half court.

If it was so easy to slow down Giannis in the half court the Bucks wouldn't be leading the league in SRS.

And then Giannis was put in hell offensively in the ECF.

Giannis hasn’t been in too many playoff series against an elite defense since, but I do wonder how he’d fare these days against a 19 Raptors defense and coaching staff.


I’m always looking for a clear peak Giannis year because I don’t think there is one.

I saw 2021 Blake Griffin defend him tremendously without help defense.

I just don’t think his offense was ever elite until apparently now, the past two years. But to me this has come with him clearly declining defensively.

[1993Playoffs]

Giannis, he was a much better defender than Westbrook (in 2019 and even now )

[Top10alltime]

Westbrook easily, he could do more offensively. Giannis can be slowed down in half court.

If it was so easy to slow down Giannis in the half court the Bucks wouldn't be leading the league in SRS.

And then Giannis was put in hell offensively in the ECF.

Giannis hasn’t been in too many playoff series against an elite defense since, but I do wonder how he’d fare these days against a 19 Raptors defense and coaching staff.


I’m always looking for a clear peak Giannis year because I don’t think there is one.

I saw 2021 Blake Griffin defend him tremendously without help defense.

I just don’t think his offense was ever elite until apparently now, the past two years. But to me this has come with him clearly declining defensively.

There is only one year Giannis has been elite (although that year is overrated too). It's 2022, where he was top 3 in the league with Embiid & Jokic.

Giannis is terrible offensively, yes. He isn't even a top 41 offensive player of the 2000s, his offense is a bigger weakness than Jokic defense.
Players over Giannis offensively post 00:

Lebron
Steph
Jokic
CP3
KD
Luka
Kobe
Nash
Shaq
Dirk
Harden
Wade
SGA
Embiid
JKidd
Haliburton
Brunson
KG
AI
Westbrook
TMac
Tatum
Deron
Duncan
KG
Trae
Kawhi
Dame
Morant
KAT
Mitchell
Ray
Manu
Lowry
IT (not Pistons one)
Wall
Beal
Kyrie
Fox
Cade
Garland
Booker

Also Giannis is a net neutral defensively (below Jokic), and great offensively thru 2025 and 2026.

[Peregrine01]

I find Giannis such a hard player to rank offensively. In the regular season, he looks like elite with gaudy scoring totals and good efficiency but he also gets the benefit of a softer whistle and a crap load of transition points. Once you shut the spigot of easy points off, his scoring and efficiency tails off a lot. So you have a player with an offensive statistical profile that looks incredible if he can just run and dunk but if that's taken away he looks very mortal with few counters.

I feel fairly confident that 2017 Westbrook was the better offensive player and the key difference to me being the sheer amount of rim attempts he generated. But is his offensive advantage enough to outweight Giannis' defensive advantage? I don't think so.