Top 25 peaks of the 2001-25: #19-#20 Spots

[Djoker]

^Great post.

I'd also add that Westbrook being seen (painted?) as the culprit in the highly publicized 2022 Lakers' demise lead to him being seen as a losing basketball player.

[eminence]

I'm not particularly high on Westbrook, but characterizing floor-general Westbrook as 'fool's gold' is an insanely high standard. He's one of the roughly 10 best floor generals of the last quarter century who led a very good/reasonably successful Thunder team with KD.

[Cavsfansince84]

Why is Russell Westbrook not getting more attention right now?

Like I said before, it's historical revisionism

2016 POY
3. Durant (0.323)
4. Westbrook (0.282)
5. Draymond (0.186)
6. Kawhi (0.132)

2017 POY
3. Westbrook (0.384)
4. Kawhi (0.324)
5. Durant (0.144)
6. Draymond (0.100)

2019 Peaks project
24. Durant
25. Westbrook
27. Kawhi
28. Paul
30. Nash
35. Harden

Kawhi was ranked behind Westbrook by this board when both were at their peaks. But somehow Westbrook is now 10+ spots behind him because why? It's not like we have some new data that justifies a retroactive drop in Westbrook's peak ranking. People arguing against him still use basic box score stats like FG% and turnovers which have been around forever. So what's actually changed the last few years? Westbrook's career fell off in spectacular fashion and he turned into a journeyman hopping from team to team without ever winning a ring. That's it. Nothing to do with his actual peak season performance. If he had suffered a career ending injury in 2017 and didn't tarnish his reputation through years of subpar post prime play, Westbrook's peak would still be held in high regard today.

It makes no more sense to say that where he was voted in in 2019 is right and how this project is voting is wrong then it does to say it vice versa. One coming before the other doesn't mean it carries more weight. Personally I don't even hold what WB did after Okc against him in this. It's more to do with what he did in the 2017 playoffs or if you want to use the 2016 season he gets much further but doesn't have the gaudy rs stats. It's not hate for him. It's just that people all have their own way of filling out a ballot and many would not prefer WB in a vaccum over other guys on top of other guys doing more in the playoffs.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm not particularly high on Westbrook, but characterizing floor-general Westbrook as 'fool's gold' is an insanely high standard. He's one of the roughly 10 best floor generals of the last quarter century who led a very good/reasonably successful Thunder team with KD.

Wow, so this raises the question of what a "floor general" is.

I'll say that my definition includes excellent vision and decision making, which I don't believe Westbrook ever had.

I feel the same about Giannis to be clear, so for any assessment of floor general status that doesn't factor in generalship, we could call both Westbrook & Giannis "floor generals" who aren't being given that responsibility due to any thing in between their ears, but because they exceptional athletes who struggle off-ball due to poor shooting.

Nvm on the edit, conversation has progressed. I'll just say I don't like my tone much here and I'll try to be more pleasant.

[lessthanjake]

I feel like people never *truly* thought Westbrook was anything better than a bottom-half-the-top-10 player in the league in terms of impact, but people were very enamored by the achievement of averaging a triple double. And that achievement has just lost a lot of luster in retrospect, in large part because we saw Westbrook do it repeatedly after that even while his impact seemed to clearly diminish quite a lot. Not to mention that it’s been done by someone else as well since then (albeit by Jokic—a truly all-time-great player). Averaging a triple double just doesn’t have the same sway that it did at the time, and if you significantly dialed down the persuasiveness of that factor, then I don’t think people’s view of Westbrook’s year back then would’ve been nearly as high as it was in reality.

That said, I do think Westbrook is someone who should definitely start to be considered around now. He has not been a good player for years now, but I think all indications are that he was a pretty great player in his peak. I’m very comfortable with having a guy like Kawhi above Westbrook, regardless of what people thought at the time (which, again, I think was really heavily influenced by the “first person since Oscar Robertson to average a triple double” thing). And I’m fairly comfortable not voting for him in this particular thread. But when we get towards the very end of this top 25, I think Westbrook should be one of the guys at the top of our minds.

There’s a lot of guys to consider for the last handful of spots though. Like, outside of guys already voted in, we’ve got (in no particular order): AD, Luka, Tatum, Butler, McGrady, Dwight, Kidd, Iverson, Embiid, Rose, Pau Gasol, Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Dame, Haliburton, and Westbrook. Over half of those guys won’t make it. A few of the guys on that list are a relatively easy cut for me (and Westbrook isn’t one of them), but there really will inevitably be some guys that I instinctively feel like belong on this sort of list that nevertheless won’t ever make my ballot. Not sure at the moment whether Westbrook will be one of those or not.

[eminence]

I'm not particularly high on Westbrook, but characterizing floor-general Westbrook as 'fool's gold' is an insanely high standard. He's one of the roughly 10 best floor generals of the last quarter century who led a very good/reasonably successful Thunder team with KD.

Wow, so this raises the question of what a "floor general" is.

I'll say that my definition includes excellent vision and decision making, which I don't believe Westbrook ever had.

I feel the same about Giannis to be clear, so for any assessment of floor general status that doesn't factor in generalship, we could call both Westbrook & Giannis "floor generals" who aren't being given that responsibility due to any thing in between their ears, but because they exceptional athletes who struggle off-ball due to poor shooting.

So I'm going to EDIT in a second just fyi.

My own immediate thoughts on what a floor general is. Firstly, I took your comment to refer to offense only, defensive floor generals exist, but it's really a completely different role. So on offense, floor general = decision making for others/the offense in total, focused on making plays for others, mostly with ball in hand (direction can come from players without the ball, but it's a tiny percentage of overall potential impact as best I can tell). Some level of technical proficiency is required. Handle/athleticism to move where you want on the floor, speed/accuracy on passes, etc. Being capable of calling your own number is also necessary (Westbrook probably called his own too much, Nash not often enough, while guys like Rubio/Kidd seem various levels of less capable).

Westbrook did a lot/the majority of the offensive decision making with Durant, and in '17 without KD was in the very top tier of decision making burden, shifting back down a bit when George arrived.

I don't think Westbrook/Giannis/whomever being physically capable of making decisions others can't makes them less of a decision maker - if Nash could've just bullied his way to the rim I'm sure he would've with regularity (LeBron certainly has). Westbrook I have many tiers above Giannis as a 'floor general', as he's behind Giannis as an individual scoring threat, and lightyears behind as a defender, and yet not particularly far off in most overall impact measures.

A sidenote, Westbrooks rebounding can also get underplayed. A guard can theoretically rack up low value rebounds, and it does happen, but Westbrook is not really an example, he was a great rebounding guard and every measure I've seen bears that out.

[Jaivl]

This is ridiculous, but RealGM collectively (with a few ball-knowers) are diehard Embiid haters and Giannis stans. IDK why, but that's how it is.

How is 2020 AD better than 2023 Embiid, when, he was spoonfed by Lebron? (...) compared to AD who was wide open (Lebron's scoring threat created AD's assisted shots).

He really wasn't. Watch a game.

He was. Over 2/3 of his shots were assisted by him. Ironic statement

How can that be, when less than 2/3 of his shots were assisted, period? Please explain.

In fact, LeBron assisted on 54 of Davis' 205 field goals, many of those being simple pick and roll/pop or alley oop reads.

Come on, you don't even need to watch a game, there's plenty of highlights on Youtube.

[LA Bird]

Here I think it's first helpful to note that we're not talking about Westbrook perception necessarily falling off a cliff, we're just talking about 3 guys (KD, Dray & Kawhi) moving ahead of Peak Westbrook in people's minds.

Westbrook dropped by 18 spots between 2019 and 2022 in peak projects which was the largest decline of any player. To say it's only "3 guys" who overtook him is wildly inaccurate.

In the case of KD, I think we have to point to how absurdly low the actual MVP voters were on the '16-17 Warriors. They had none of the Warriors in their Top 5, and Kevin Durant received a grand total of 2 5th place votes in a voting pool of more than 100 people.

The narrative thinking set by the press in this year seems to have been essentially "Of course the Warriors are the best in the world because they are loaded with talent, therefore we shouldn't give any serious credit to any individual talent on the team. Better to vote for Isaiah Thomas than any Warrior!"

You have things confused. I referenced POY results as voted on by members of this board after the playoffs was over. The media voting in a regular season award is completely irrelevant to the discussion here. Mentioning Isaiah Thomas is nothing but a strawman because no one voted him for POY.

as it became more and more clear that Westbrook didn't actually have a place on teams that good.

It became more and more clear in later years that the version of Westbrook who shot FTs in the 60s doesn't have a place on an all time team. Yeah, we can agree on that. Now what does that have to do with 16/17 Westbrook? Either:

1. You are claiming Westbrook's shot never declined at all or
2. The decline in shooting didn't hurt his impact as a player

Which one is it?

Dray definitely has a somewhat analogous story, but with the extra thing where his lack of star scoring allowed people to simply tier him below this level of player, and that relates to why he didn't receive a single 5th place vote in 2017 while even DeMar "adds value for your playoff opponent" DeRozan got a vote. Dray getting voted in where he did speaks to this voter base thinking quite differently than MVP voters typically do.

Again, those were POY results I listed not MVP. Media votes are meaningless here.

Then there's Kawhi, who Westbrook only barely topped. I think if you asked people generally at the time why they voted for Westbrook for MVP over Kawhi, good chance they'd quickly end up saying something "C'mon, he averaged a Triple Double! You have to give a Triple Double Average guy the MVP!", which literally no one would say because we've since seen Westbrook average a triple double in subsequent years on god-awful efficiency with quite limited signs of actual value add.

Do you really think the POY voters at the time only voted for Westbrook because OMG triple doubles? Or are you trying to equate posters on this board with facebook casuals so it is easier to tear down this weak strawman? There are plenty of +/- based arguments for Westbrook.

And this gets into the "nothing statistical has changed" argument you present. Sure it has, people used to think that averaging a triple double meant that you were a great scorer, facilitator, and rebounder. Now they know that you can achieve a triple doubles on the regular if the rest of the team is commanded to let you take the ball at all times. Doesn't matter if you're a great rebounder because we want you to start the fast break. Doesn't matter if you're a great passer because only the guy with the ball can pass the ball, and so being helio means racking up assists. Doesn't matter if you're a great scorer because we've already decided to just let you shoot whatever the hell shot you want.

And so for me, who was pointing this stuff out prior to 2017, nothing statistical really has changed since 2017, and neither has my vote. But for anyone who wasn't pointing out the fool's gold of Westbrook as a floor general back then, it makes sense that many of them now see the problem.

If you want to argue Westbrook's triple double doesn't accurately reflect his impact, why don't you simply reference his +/- stats like you do with every other player? Surely it will be easy to expose this fraud if he had empty box score numbers. But you would rather write all that without touching any of the +/- numbers. Strange. Anyways, here is a Westbrook writeup without any box scores or triple doubles:

Here is how he compares to other notable floor carry seasons - note that his team did the best with him on court but the worst without him.

17 Westbrook: +14.7 on/off (+4.0 on, -10.8 off)
09 Wade: +13.5 on/off (+3.2 on, -10.3 off)
06 Bryant: +11.3 on/off (+3.5 on, -7.9 off)
03 McGrady: +11.5 on/off (+2.2 on, -9.2 off)

The second big critique for 17 Westbrook was the first round exit. Not ideal obviously but I should point out everyone else on the list above also went out in round 1. And Wade got several top 10 votes this project with his 09 season so the early exit shouldn't be a problem by itself. What matters more is how the player performed despite the loss and other than the G1 blowout (which Wade had too FWIW), this is how Westbrook did:

G2: +11 on. OKC went 12-27 when he sat to lose by 4.
G4: +14 on. OKC went 8-26 when he sat to lose by 4.
G5: +12 on. OKC went 9-27 when he sat to lose by 6.

The Thunder went a combined 29-80 when Westbrook was off the court. People will nitpick his FG% or turnovers as if that lost them the game but the reality is that Westbrook, for all his flaws, still consistently generated double digit leads against Houston... only for OKC to blow it every time he went to the bench. Lou Williams and a 34 year old Nene had career series demolishing the Thunder bench. The popular narrative for this series is that it proved Harden was the real MVP when actually the Thunder collapse without Westbrook only strengthened his case. Andre Roberson was the second highest scorer for OKC. But despite a far weaker supporting cast, Westbrook still led better team results when he was in the game. And he did better against Harden H2H than Kawhi did the very next round. I know people will be uncomfortable with this take because it is easy to think the winner must have been the better player but then again, I don't see anyone ever arguing Joe Johnson over 09 Wade despite his win.

The last main argument against Westbrook is the floor vs ceiling raiser debate - he may be good at carrying bad teams but he can't fit next to another superstar on title contenders. But putting aside personal dislike of his playstyle, is that even true? In 2016, Russ and KD were +14 net as a duo in the regular season excluding low leverage possessions, with Westbrook having a marginally higher individual on/off (+13.4 to +12.7). In the playoffs, Westbrook had a +13 on court offense and that number is +10.2 when we include 2012/14 for a larger 3 year sample. For comparison, Curry also had a +10.2 postseason offense in 2017/18/19 when Durant was in Golden State. How is that a low ceiling? The real problem for Westbrook is that he never won a ring while Durant immediately did once he went to GS so all the ring counters blame him for OKC never winning one. Never mind the fact that they lost to some all time teams like the 14 Spurs and 16 Warriors. Or that OKC would have won too if they swapped Ibaka/Waiters and Draymond/Klay. If it was Westbrook who went to the Spurs that offseason and won a ring while Durant stayed ringless in OKC, guess who fans would have criticized instead? Westbrook is more proven as both floor raiser and ceiling raiser than anyone else at this point.

Which of these points do you disagree with? Be specific so we can have an actual debate about it.

[Owly]

Here I think it's first helpful to note that we're not talking about Westbrook perception necessarily falling off a cliff, we're just talking about 3 guys (KD, Dray & Kawhi) moving ahead of Peak Westbrook in people's minds.

Westbrook dropped by 18 spots between 2019 and 2022 in peak projects which was the largest decline of any player. To say it's only "3 guys" who overtook him is wildly inaccurate.

In the case of KD, I think we have to point to how absurdly low the actual MVP voters were on the '16-17 Warriors. They had none of the Warriors in their Top 5, and Kevin Durant received a grand total of 2 5th place votes in a voting pool of more than 100 people.

The narrative thinking set by the press in this year seems to have been essentially "Of course the Warriors are the best in the world because they are loaded with talent, therefore we shouldn't give any serious credit to any individual talent on the team. Better to vote for Isaiah Thomas than any Warrior!"

You have things confused. I referenced POY results as voted on by members of this board after the playoffs was over. The media voting in a regular season award is completely irrelevant to the discussion here. Mentioning Isaiah Thomas is nothing but a strawman because no one voted him for POY.

as it became more and more clear that Westbrook didn't actually have a place on teams that good.

It became more and more clear in later years that the version of Westbrook who shot FTs in the 60s doesn't have a place on an all time team. Yeah, we can agree on that. Now what does that have to do with 16/17 Westbrook? Either:

1. You are claiming Westbrook's shot never declined at all or
2. The decline in shooting didn't hurt his impact as a player

Which one is it?

Dray definitely has a somewhat analogous story, but with the extra thing where his lack of star scoring allowed people to simply tier him below this level of player, and that relates to why he didn't receive a single 5th place vote in 2017 while even DeMar "adds value for your playoff opponent" DeRozan got a vote. Dray getting voted in where he did speaks to this voter base thinking quite differently than MVP voters typically do.

Again, those were POY results I listed not MVP. Media votes are meaningless here.

Then there's Kawhi, who Westbrook only barely topped. I think if you asked people generally at the time why they voted for Westbrook for MVP over Kawhi, good chance they'd quickly end up saying something "C'mon, he averaged a Triple Double! You have to give a Triple Double Average guy the MVP!", which literally no one would say because we've since seen Westbrook average a triple double in subsequent years on god-awful efficiency with quite limited signs of actual value add.

Do you really think the POY voters at the time only voted for Westbrook because OMG triple doubles? Or are you trying to equate posters on this board with facebook casuals so it is easier to tear down this weak strawman? There are plenty of +/- based arguments for Westbrook.

And this gets into the "nothing statistical has changed" argument you present. Sure it has, people used to think that averaging a triple double meant that you were a great scorer, facilitator, and rebounder. Now they know that you can achieve a triple doubles on the regular if the rest of the team is commanded to let you take the ball at all times. Doesn't matter if you're a great rebounder because we want you to start the fast break. Doesn't matter if you're a great passer because only the guy with the ball can pass the ball, and so being helio means racking up assists. Doesn't matter if you're a great scorer because we've already decided to just let you shoot whatever the hell shot you want.

And so for me, who was pointing this stuff out prior to 2017, nothing statistical really has changed since 2017, and neither has my vote. But for anyone who wasn't pointing out the fool's gold of Westbrook as a floor general back then, it makes sense that many of them now see the problem.

If you want to argue Westbrook's triple double doesn't accurately reflect his impact, why don't you simply reference his +/- stats like you do with every other player? Surely it will be easy to expose this fraud if he had empty box score numbers. But you would rather write all that without touching any of the +/- numbers. Strange. Anyways, here is a Westbrook writeup without any box scores or triple doubles:

Here is how he compares to other notable floor carry seasons - note that his team did the best with him on court but the worst without him.

17 Westbrook: +14.7 on/off (+4.0 on, -10.8 off)
09 Wade: +13.5 on/off (+3.2 on, -10.3 off)
06 Bryant: +11.3 on/off (+3.5 on, -7.9 off)
03 McGrady: +11.5 on/off (+2.2 on, -9.2 off)

The second big critique for 17 Westbrook was the first round exit. Not ideal obviously but I should point out everyone else on the list above also went out in round 1. And Wade got several top 10 votes this project with his 09 season so the early exit shouldn't be a problem by itself. What matters more is how the player performed despite the loss and other than the G1 blowout (which Wade had too FWIW), this is how Westbrook did:

G2: +11 on. OKC went 12-27 when he sat to lose by 4.
G4: +14 on. OKC went 8-26 when he sat to lose by 4.
G5: +12 on. OKC went 9-27 when he sat to lose by 6.

The Thunder went a combined 29-80 when Westbrook was off the court. People will nitpick his FG% or turnovers as if that lost them the game but the reality is that Westbrook, for all his flaws, still consistently generated double digit leads against Houston... only for OKC to blow it every time he went to the bench. Lou Williams and a 34 year old Nene had career series demolishing the Thunder bench. The popular narrative for this series is that it proved Harden was the real MVP when actually the Thunder collapse without Westbrook only strengthened his case. Andre Roberson was the second highest scorer for OKC. But despite a far weaker supporting cast, Westbrook still led better team results when he was in the game. And he did better against Harden H2H than Kawhi did the very next round. I know people will be uncomfortable with this take because it is easy to think the winner must have been the better player but then again, I don't see anyone ever arguing Joe Johnson over 09 Wade despite his win.

The last main argument against Westbrook is the floor vs ceiling raiser debate - he may be good at carrying bad teams but he can't fit next to another superstar on title contenders. But putting aside personal dislike of his playstyle, is that even true? In 2016, Russ and KD were +14 net as a duo in the regular season excluding low leverage possessions, with Westbrook having a marginally higher individual on/off (+13.4 to +12.7). In the playoffs, Westbrook had a +13 on court offense and that number is +10.2 when we include 2012/14 for a larger 3 year sample. For comparison, Curry also had a +10.2 postseason offense in 2017/18/19 when Durant was in Golden State. How is that a low ceiling? The real problem for Westbrook is that he never won a ring while Durant immediately did once he went to GS so all the ring counters blame him for OKC never winning one. Never mind the fact that they lost to some all time teams like the 14 Spurs and 16 Warriors. Or that OKC would have won too if they swapped Ibaka/Waiters and Draymond/Klay. If it was Westbrook who went to the Spurs that offseason and won a ring while Durant stayed ringless in OKC, guess who fans would have criticized instead? Westbrook is more proven as both floor raiser and ceiling raiser than anyone else at this point.

Which of these points do you disagree with? Be specific so we can have an actual debate about it.

Not necessarily a strong Westbrook backer. And I don't know whether "The real problem for Westbrook is that he never won a ring while Durant immediately did once he went to GS so all the ring counters blame him for OKC never winning one" is a real argument against people actually present here. IDK because some are a lot more team success/title centric for these purposes than me but at the same time ... I think ring count is bad and unsophisticated in and of itself ... I don't know how many people are doing that but then giving Durant huge bonus credit for joining GSW (and I don't kill KD for the narrative side of that, but it's not like it was a team that needed a whole bunch to get over the top ... and fwiw, instinctively I feel there might be some ring guys who overlap with the "you can't join a 'rival'" but IDK) and working back to discredit Westbrook ... seems like a lot of work to get to a crude/weak argument. But maybe they are. But I tangent.

Not necessarily my bag in terms of small sample but if this was about versus Harden and 2017 playoff series specific (and like I say a really small sample, especially for +/-) and if people were/are drawing on that I thought I'd check Harden's numbers and for whatever it's worth, converse to Westbrook, they seem to do better with him off, just eyeballing it.

[Cavsfansince84]

Not necessarily a strong Westbrook backer. And I don't know whether "The real problem for Westbrook is that he never won a ring while Durant immediately did once he went to GS so all the ring counters blame him for OKC never winning one" is a real argument against people actually present here. IDK because some are a lot more team success/title centric for these purposes than me but at the same time ... I think ring count is bad and unsophisticated in and of itself ... I don't know how many people are doing that but then giving Durant huge bonus credit for joining GSW (and I don't kill KD for the narrative side of that, but it's not like it was a team that needed a whole bunch to get over the top ... and fwiw, instinctively I feel there might be some ring guys who overlap with the "you can't join a 'rival'" but IDK) and working back to discredit Westbrook ... seems like a lot of work to get to a crude/weak argument. But maybe they are. But I tangent.

Not necessarily my bag in terms of small sample but if this was about versus Harden and 2017 playoff series specific (and like I say a really small sample, especially for +/-) and if people were/are drawing on that I thought I'd check Harden's numbers and for whatever it's worth, converse to Westbrook, they seem to do better with him off, just eyeballing it.

Personally, I don't think KD's rings did much of anything for a KD>WB argument. I just don't think it was much of a question to begin with. KD is the one who was casually putting up +300 ts add seasons and finishing top 2 in mvp voting 4 times while in Okc. WB was more like a top 10 player who had some series where he was getting to the line a ton and shooting ft's at near outlier levels in those series(like close to 90%). I think a few playoff series which had people wondering which guy played better in those series didn't change much of anything.
KD was the freakish generational type player from 2010 on. WB was a guy who as a pg had his life made much easier playing next to him and could up his game at times in the playoffs. That's how I view them. WB's game imo does not scale well without a great scorer playing next to him or else you end up with what WB did in the 2017 playoffs where he's shooting it 40+ times because he convinces himself he's a good outside shooter and wants to roll the dice. Not to mention the turnovers.

[Top10alltime]

He really wasn't. Watch a game.

He was. Over 2/3 of his shots were assisted by him. Ironic statement

How can that be, when less than 2/3 of his shots were assisted, period? Please explain.

In fact, LeBron assisted on 54 of Davis' 205 field goals, many of those being simple pick and roll/pop or alley oop reads.

Come on, you don't even need to watch a game, there's plenty of highlights on Youtube.

Lebron's threat was amazing, Davis' shots were wide open usually.

Any of 2021-24 Embiid >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>2020 Davis

[Doctor MJ]

I'm not particularly high on Westbrook, but characterizing floor-general Westbrook as 'fool's gold' is an insanely high standard. He's one of the roughly 10 best floor generals of the last quarter century who led a very good/reasonably successful Thunder team with KD.

Wow, so this raises the question of what a "floor general" is.

I'll say that my definition includes excellent vision and decision making, which I don't believe Westbrook ever had.

I feel the same about Giannis to be clear, so for any assessment of floor general status that doesn't factor in generalship, we could call both Westbrook & Giannis "floor generals" who aren't being given that responsibility due to any thing in between their ears, but because they exceptional athletes who struggle off-ball due to poor shooting.

So I'm going to EDIT in a second just fyi.

My own immediate thoughts on what a floor general is. Firstly, I took your comment to refer to offense only, defensive floor generals exist, but it's really a completely different role. So on offense, floor general = decision making for others/the offense in total, focused on making plays for others, mostly with ball in hand (direction can come from players without the ball, but it's a tiny percentage of overall potential impact as best I can tell). Some level of technical proficiency is required. Handle/athleticism to move where you want on the floor, speed/accuracy on passes, etc. Being capable of calling your own number is also necessary (Westbrook probably called his own too much, Nash not often enough, while guys like Rubio/Kidd seem various levels of less capable).

Westbrook did a lot/the majority of the offensive decision making with Durant, and in '17 without KD was in the very top tier of decision making burden, shifting back down a bit when George arrived.

I don't think Westbrook/Giannis/whomever being physically capable of making decisions others can't makes them less of a decision maker - if Nash could've just bullied his way to the rim I'm sure he would've with regularity (LeBron certainly has). Westbrook I have many tiers above Giannis as a 'floor general', as he's behind Giannis as an individual scoring threat, and lightyears behind as a defender, and yet not particularly far off in most overall impact measures.

A sidenote, Westbrooks rebounding can also get underplayed. A guard can theoretically rack up low value rebounds, and it does happen, but Westbrook is not really an example, he was a great rebounding guard and every measure I've seen bears that out.

So, first I appreciate you seeking to clarify what the 'floor general' label means to you. In the end, these labels are not the thing, they are just the hand holds we use to point in the direction of the thing.

To try to distinguish between your usage and mine:

When I talk about top 'floor generals', I'm talking about classic point guard skills with a heavy focus on BBIQ. Hence, I'd say someone can be quite valuable in a ball-dominant role even if they lack classic point guard skills, but that doesn't mean I'd say they are being a 'top floor general'.

When you talk about 'floor general', it seems like you're saying that if you play the ball dominant role, you are the (offensive) floor general, and however valuable you are playing like that can also be described as "how good of a floor general you are".

Please correct me if I've mischaracterized you.

The rub for me - why I really tend to push back against characterizing 'floor general' as you do - is that to me putting guys like Westbrook or Giannis as the ball-dominant player is rejecting the idea that you need a 'general', as I see Westbrook/Giannis are more one-man army types.

But as I say that, there is a question of "Who cares?". Why does it matter that your lead on-ball guy thrives due to brain or brawn?

My answer would be: It doesn't necessarily matter to the team result depending on how good the on-ball guy is at his strengths, but it will affect in particular what help teammates can be expected to be along the way.


Re: rebounding underplayed, measures bear that out for Westbrook. Well, if I go to nbarapm and look at their 6 factor stuff, what I see is Westbrook have positive Offensive Rebounding impact, but typically slightly negative Defensive Rebounding impact, and this fits with at least the picture I was trying to paint:

Individual Offensive Rebounds typically represent Offensive Rebounding impact pretty well because it's about one guy crashing.

Individual Defensive Rebounds don't represent Defensive Rebounding impact well because good defensive rebounding is about working together with teammates to make sure nothing slips through the cracks, and this is mostly about box outs and scuh.

This then to say: I do think Westbrook is a net positive rebounder overall, but the Double Digit Rebounds is mostly about defensive rebounds, and no, I don't think he's really adding value directly with that. Rather, he adds value due to it in proportion to his ability to kickstart the success of the offensive possession.

[eminence]

Wow, so this raises the question of what a "floor general" is.

I'll say that my definition includes excellent vision and decision making, which I don't believe Westbrook ever had.

I feel the same about Giannis to be clear, so for any assessment of floor general status that doesn't factor in generalship, we could call both Westbrook & Giannis "floor generals" who aren't being given that responsibility due to any thing in between their ears, but because they exceptional athletes who struggle off-ball due to poor shooting.

So I'm going to EDIT in a second just fyi.

My own immediate thoughts on what a floor general is. Firstly, I took your comment to refer to offense only, defensive floor generals exist, but it's really a completely different role. So on offense, floor general = decision making for others/the offense in total, focused on making plays for others, mostly with ball in hand (direction can come from players without the ball, but it's a tiny percentage of overall potential impact as best I can tell). Some level of technical proficiency is required. Handle/athleticism to move where you want on the floor, speed/accuracy on passes, etc. Being capable of calling your own number is also necessary (Westbrook probably called his own too much, Nash not often enough, while guys like Rubio/Kidd seem various levels of less capable).

Westbrook did a lot/the majority of the offensive decision making with Durant, and in '17 without KD was in the very top tier of decision making burden, shifting back down a bit when George arrived.

I don't think Westbrook/Giannis/whomever being physically capable of making decisions others can't makes them less of a decision maker - if Nash could've just bullied his way to the rim I'm sure he would've with regularity (LeBron certainly has). Westbrook I have many tiers above Giannis as a 'floor general', as he's behind Giannis as an individual scoring threat, and lightyears behind as a defender, and yet not particularly far off in most overall impact measures.

A sidenote, Westbrooks rebounding can also get underplayed. A guard can theoretically rack up low value rebounds, and it does happen, but Westbrook is not really an example, he was a great rebounding guard and every measure I've seen bears that out.

So, first I appreciate you seeking to clarify what the 'floor general' label means to you. In the end, these labels are not the thing, they are just the hand holds we use to point in the direction of the thing.

To try to distinguish between your usage and mine:

When I talk about top 'floor generals', I'm talking about classic point guard skills with a heavy focus on BBIQ. Hence, I'd say someone can be quite valuable in a ball-dominant role even if they lack classic point guard skills, but that doesn't mean I'd say they are being a 'top floor general'.

When you talk about 'floor general', it seems like you're saying that if you play the ball dominant role, you are the (offensive) floor general, and however valuable you are playing like that can also be described as "how good of a floor general you are".

Please correct me if I've mischaracterized you.

The rub for me - why I really tend to push back against characterizing 'floor general' as you do - is that to me putting guys like Westbrook or Giannis as the ball-dominant player is rejecting the idea that you need a 'general', as I see Westbrook/Giannis are more one-man army types.

But as I say that, there is a question of "Who cares?". Why does it matter that your lead on-ball guy thrives due to brain or brawn?

My answer would be: It doesn't necessarily matter to the team result depending on how good the on-ball guy is at his strengths, but it will affect in particular what help teammates can be expected to be along the way.

Hmm, it's not so far off a characterization - thought I'd re-emphasize an emphasis of ball dominance as it leads to playmaking for others (I would not describe a Melo sort of player as a floor-general even though he was plenty of ball-dominant). High ball dominance + high playmaking for others = floor general (more or less)

Yeah, I'm just not with the Giannis/Russ grouping, I view Russ as an excellent floor general and would not describe Giannis as one at all. Giannis is a good offensive player almost solely through his personal efficiency (which is quite good), but his playmaking for others is providing nearly no value. Westbrook is a notably better offensive player than Giannis while being notably less efficient (109 vs 95 career TS+, both higher at peak, but fairly representative) - Russ has his impact through getting his teammates good looks and limiting team turnovers (and Orebounding too, but not so relevant here).

Looking at the '15-'17 period (I think pretty commonly agreed upon as his best years, I personally like '16 the best). Nbarapm.
9th in the league in rapm, +5.3
4th in the league in orapm, +6.4 (-1.1 defense, obviously not great) (Curry/Harden/LeBron above)
5th in the league in TS Val, +3.8 (Curry/LeBron/Harden/KD above)
11th in the league in TOV Val, +1.2

If a player is one of the best in the league at both A) Getting teammates good looks (my general take on TS Val in combination with your own scoring efficiency), B) Limiting turnovers, and C) Being very ball dominant - I'd be hard pressed to come up with a better descriptor than 'floor general'. Do you have some other explanation for Russ positively influencing his team TS% to such a degree while he himself was league average-ish efficiency?

I agree that Westbrook relied more on his athleticism and individual pressure towards the rim than plenty of guys we've seen labeled as floor generals (a big part of his aging curve being pretty rough), but I guess I don't see it as enough of a reason not to call him one.

[DraymondGold]

Sorry for missing last round! Voting post for this round:

1. 2024 Joel Embiid (> 2019? How does one pick a year for him?)
2. 2020 Anthony Davis
3. 2024 Luka Doncic
4. 2003 Tracy McGrady

Next are Embiid and AD. I see them as the border between Tier 2 and 3. Both have high arguments to get them into Tier 2. Both have major limitations.

For Embiid, it’s obviously healthy. Does a healthy Embiid exist? If we have to go with an early-prime version of Embiid (circa 2019) to get a guy who could finish the playoffs (and even he might be banged up by the end), how much worse is he when he’s younger? For the purposes of a project focused on peaks (which to me is close to “who’s the best at their best”), how much should I be willing to forgive for being injury prone to just focus on player abilities when healthy? An actualized 2024 Embiid with health may well have gotten in a few threads earlier. That player didn’t entirely exist, and existed for a short enough sample that it’s unclear how much of the peak impact is noise even if I did just want to focus on healthy Embiid. It's just hard to tell with this guy. Regardless, he's a really fantastic defender (slightly better when he was younger, but still great by 2024) and provides a ton of offensive lift with his diverse scoring arsenal and improved playmaking/decision-making as he got older.

For AD, it’s the regular season. He’d the worst regular season player to be voted in by far. As the Thinking Basketball peaks project pointed out, much of this is due to a lack of creation. He has the smallest impact on his teammate’s true shooting by far of anyone discussed here (basically neutral or even occasionally slightly negative in the regular season; very small positive in the playoffs). He still retains scalability as a finisher along side a good creator, but the lack of playmaking does hold him back. There’s been some very enjoyable discussion between Jaivl and Jake about playoff rising. I tend to think playoff resilience is a bit overrated in discussions of certain players (or at minimum often misdiagnosed for a change in health, differences in situational fit, and small-sample noise). I absolutely think we should ground our analysis with a healthy dose of regular season analysis, since playoffs can really truly be subject to a lot of small-sample noise. But as others have pointed out, (a) there is a preparation and adjustments aspect that’s pretty unique to the playoffs. As Jake says, (b) there’s a level of effort increase in the playoffs. I think this is particularly relevant for players with limited motor, drive, or durability. This last aspect — durability and motor — seem particularly relevant to AD, who has a body that wears down if put under too much continuous strain. It makes sense for someone with known durability issues to dial it back in the regular season, then boost it for a short stretch of games in the playoffs. The defensive effort clearly goes up, as does the physicality of offense. There’s further evidence of this with AD’s position — he shifts to play more small-ball 5 in the playoffs than the regular season, and he’s likely gaining some value there. All that to say, I do have concerns about his lack of playmaking and the stability of his shooting, which hold him back from being higher. But I do think he’s at the intersection of being scalable and resilient, with a lot of highly valuable ceiling-raising skills if placed with a nice fitting lead creator. So I think it’s enough to get him over the other competition.

For Luka and McGrady, I see them as slightly more impactful in my mean interpretation than the rest of the competition. I think they provide more offensive lift than the competition, and in an offensively-powered era, that matters. That said, the lower we get, the closer players get so the easier it is to vote for other players. There's plenty of arguments for... other star guards (Westbrook, Kidd, Ray Allen, Damian Lillard), two-way wings (Jayson Tatum, Butler, Paul Pierce, Paul George), all-defensive bigs (Dwight, Gobert).

[Doctor MJ]

Here I think it's first helpful to note that we're not talking about Westbrook perception necessarily falling off a cliff, we're just talking about 3 guys (KD, Dray & Kawhi) moving ahead of Peak Westbrook in people's minds.

Westbrook dropped by 18 spots between 2019 and 2022 in peak projects which was the largest decline of any player. To say it's only "3 guys" who overtook him is wildly inaccurate.

Okay so let me first say: 18 is a lot of spots. I was responding to things like the 2017 vote because that's what I saw people mention, but 18? Yup, that's a lot. No two ways about it.

If I look at the list to see the 18 guys who moved above him - first and foremost just to get my bearings:

Guys on the 2019 list below Westbrook who are above him in 2022 (11):
Barkley, Kawhi, Paul, Mikan, Nash, Giannis, Malone, Dwight, Gilmore, Harden, Pettit

Guys not on the 2019 list who are above him in 2022 (7):
Jokic, AD, Embiid, Pippen, Penny, Green, Lanier

That's really something, and I'm not really sure what to say other than to agree that clearly people have lost enthusiasm for Westbrook.

In the case of KD, I think we have to point to how absurdly low the actual MVP voters were on the '16-17 Warriors. They had none of the Warriors in their Top 5, and Kevin Durant received a grand total of 2 5th place votes in a voting pool of more than 100 people.

The narrative thinking set by the press in this year seems to have been essentially "Of course the Warriors are the best in the world because they are loaded with talent, therefore we shouldn't give any serious credit to any individual talent on the team. Better to vote for Isaiah Thomas than any Warrior!"

You have things confused. I referenced POY results as voted on by members of this board after the playoffs was over. The media voting in a regular season award is completely irrelevant to the discussion here. Mentioning Isaiah Thomas is nothing but a strawman because no one voted him for POY.

Ah, well I understand why you took it that way. What I was trying to say was that some guys were ranked pretty absurdly low in the general NBA discourse and that while the POY was more reasonable, I still think it took some time and distance here before people appreciated the scale of what those Warriors were achieving.

as it became more and more clear that Westbrook didn't actually have a place on teams that good.

It became more and more clear in later years that the version of Westbrook who shot FTs in the 60s doesn't have a place on an all time team. Yeah, we can agree on that. Now what does that have to do with 16/17 Westbrook? Either:

1. You are claiming Westbrook's shot never declined at all or
2. The decline in shooting didn't hurt his impact as a player

Which one is it?

Certainly Westbrook becoming a worse shooter while continuing to call his own number similarly was a new problem, but let me also at least post my complete sentence from before here:

"The fact that KD was playing a critical starring role on the greatest team in the history of mankind would be a feather in his cap with respect to Westbrook as it became more and more clear that Westbrook didn't actually have a place on teams that good."

And emphasize that I absolutely do insist that Westbrook never had a place as a star on the greatest team in the history of mankind. If you'd like to take me on that, feel free. In a nutshell I'd say:

Star Westbrook means that your floor general will be a relatively poor decision maker.

Do you disagree? Presuming so, how?

Then there's Kawhi, who Westbrook only barely topped. I think if you asked people generally at the time why they voted for Westbrook for MVP over Kawhi, good chance they'd quickly end up saying something "C'mon, he averaged a Triple Double! You have to give a Triple Double Average guy the MVP!", which literally no one would say because we've since seen Westbrook average a triple double in subsequent years on god-awful efficiency with quite limited signs of actual value add.

Do you really think the POY voters at the time only voted for Westbrook because OMG triple doubles? Or are you trying to equate posters on this board with facebook casuals so it is easier to tear down this weak strawman? There are plenty of +/- based arguments for Westbrook.

So I'll also acknowledge here that my words meander between talking about the PC Board specifically and basketball culture generally, and you looking to focus attention on just what was said on the PC Board is a good thing. I wasn't trying to straw man, but I understand how my stream of thought could be argued to have effectively done just that, and I'll bow to your objection.

I don't think that voters here were simply looking at the Triple Double.

And this gets into the "nothing statistical has changed" argument you present. Sure it has, people used to think that averaging a triple double meant that you were a great scorer, facilitator, and rebounder. Now they know that you can achieve a triple doubles on the regular if the rest of the team is commanded to let you take the ball at all times. Doesn't matter if you're a great rebounder because we want you to start the fast break. Doesn't matter if you're a great passer because only the guy with the ball can pass the ball, and so being helio means racking up assists. Doesn't matter if you're a great scorer because we've already decided to just let you shoot whatever the hell shot you want.

And so for me, who was pointing this stuff out prior to 2017, nothing statistical really has changed since 2017, and neither has my vote. But for anyone who wasn't pointing out the fool's gold of Westbrook as a floor general back then, it makes sense that many of them now see the problem.

If you want to argue Westbrook's triple double doesn't accurately reflect his impact, why don't you simply reference his +/- stats like you do with every other player? Surely it will be easy to expose this fraud if he had empty box score numbers. But you would rather write all that without touching any of the +/- numbers. Strange. Anyways, here is a Westbrook writeup without any box scores or triple doubles:

Here is how he compares to other notable floor carry seasons - note that his team did the best with him on court but the worst without him.

17 Westbrook: +14.7 on/off (+4.0 on, -10.8 off)
09 Wade: +13.5 on/off (+3.2 on, -10.3 off)
06 Bryant: +11.3 on/off (+3.5 on, -7.9 off)
03 McGrady: +11.5 on/off (+2.2 on, -9.2 off)

The second big critique for 17 Westbrook was the first round exit. Not ideal obviously but I should point out everyone else on the list above also went out in round 1. And Wade got several top 10 votes this project with his 09 season so the early exit shouldn't be a problem by itself. What matters more is how the player performed despite the loss and other than the G1 blowout (which Wade had too FWIW), this is how Westbrook did:

G2: +11 on. OKC went 12-27 when he sat to lose by 4.
G4: +14 on. OKC went 8-26 when he sat to lose by 4.
G5: +12 on. OKC went 9-27 when he sat to lose by 6.

The Thunder went a combined 29-80 when Westbrook was off the court. People will nitpick his FG% or turnovers as if that lost them the game but the reality is that Westbrook, for all his flaws, still consistently generated double digit leads against Houston... only for OKC to blow it every time he went to the bench. Lou Williams and a 34 year old Nene had career series demolishing the Thunder bench. The popular narrative for this series is that it proved Harden was the real MVP when actually the Thunder collapse without Westbrook only strengthened his case. Andre Roberson was the second highest scorer for OKC. But despite a far weaker supporting cast, Westbrook still led better team results when he was in the game. And he did better against Harden H2H than Kawhi did the very next round. I know people will be uncomfortable with this take because it is easy to think the winner must have been the better player but then again, I don't see anyone ever arguing Joe Johnson over 09 Wade despite his win.

The last main argument against Westbrook is the floor vs ceiling raiser debate - he may be good at carrying bad teams but he can't fit next to another superstar on title contenders. But putting aside personal dislike of his playstyle, is that even true? In 2016, Russ and KD were +14 net as a duo in the regular season excluding low leverage possessions, with Westbrook having a marginally higher individual on/off (+13.4 to +12.7). In the playoffs, Westbrook had a +13 on court offense and that number is +10.2 when we include 2012/14 for a larger 3 year sample. For comparison, Curry also had a +10.2 postseason offense in 2017/18/19 when Durant was in Golden State. How is that a low ceiling? The real problem for Westbrook is that he never won a ring while Durant immediately did once he went to GS so all the ring counters blame him for OKC never winning one. Never mind the fact that they lost to some all time teams like the 14 Spurs and 16 Warriors. Or that OKC would have won too if they swapped Ibaka/Waiters and Draymond/Klay. If it was Westbrook who went to the Spurs that offseason and won a ring while Durant stayed ringless in OKC, guess who fans would have criticized instead? Westbrook is more proven as both floor raiser and ceiling raiser than anyone else at this point.

Which of these points do you disagree with? Be specific so we can have an actual debate about it.

So a lot of good stuff here. I think the ceiling raiser question is at the heart of the disagreement.

When KD goes to the Warriors he raises the ceiling because he's super tall, an absolutely elite shooter, and he doesn't dominate the ball. If Westbrook goes to GS instead, what is he doing? Letting Westbrook be Westbrook means abandoning Kerr's offense entirely.

This gets into questions about portability/scalability which at this point are so hard to use as terms because people have been confused by different people using the terms to mean subtly different things, but a core piece of it to me is always this:

There's only 1 ball, so a) what are you doing with the ball that is so vital that non one else should have it? and b) what are you doing when you don't have the ball that's helping?

For (a), if the answer has nothing to do with your superior vision/thinking/passing, but instead is purely about your personal scoring threat, that's not going to scale that well against elite playoff defense.

For (b), if the answer merely "trying to get the ball back so I can cook again" instead of cutting/screening/gravity, that's not going to scale that well against elite playoff defense.

So fundamentally, you might say I have a bias toward top notch decision makers on ball, and if you're not that but insist on being on-ball, I'm going to probably be lower on you than most would.

But, what if my narrative of a lower ceiling based on the things I see as frustrating with my eyes and the corresponding box score evidence just isn't true?

You specifically mention some rORtg On data, and that's the thing that seems to speak to this possible faulty premise on my part more than anything else. If teams have outlier great ORtg with Westbrook, then where is the low ceiling?

I will say, I feel I need to just look at data myself to get my head around it, so if with what I say below you feel like I'm ignoring something related that you said, please do let me know.

You mentioned OKC in 2016 and GS in 2017. Let's take a look first at KD on those two teams in terms of ORtg and other traditional 4 factors on the b-r On-Off team page (eFG, ORB, TOV):

Durant '16 RS: ORtg 116.2, eFG 54.0, ORB 30.9, TOV 15.9
Durant '16 PS: ORtg 113.0, eFG 50.7, ORB 29.4, TOV 14.3

Durant '17 RS: ORtg 120.2, eFG 58.4, ORB 20.9, TOV 14.0
Durant '17 PS: ORtg 125.1, eFG 60.4, ORB 24.6, TOV 14.2

So the first thing we see that Durant in GS is on a generally more effective offense, which isn't necessarily that telling, because we can say "better team around him". But I think it's pretty telling that there's one area where OKC's offense is doing a lot better than GS', and that's the Offensive Rebounding.

Now, I'm totally fine praising Westbrook for Offensive Rebounding impact and I don't mean to dismiss it like it's nothing, but there are some things to note about Offensive Rebounding impact in contrast to the other major categories of offense:

1. The other factors (eFG, TOV, FT generation) can generally be grouped in a category of "primary offensive attack", whereas ORB represents a secondary action. While it's a mistake to act as if these are things happening in isolation with each other, in theory, there's really no reason why a team can't be great in both areas particularly if you're talking about a driving guard as being the primary force behind both.

2. So however much we end up crediting Westbrook for offensive rebounding impact, we should be looking at the team's performance on these primary attack factors, and considering how elite things actually look there, and clearly when the ORtg itself lags behind despite the ORB being way ahead, that means that primary attack gap must be quite significant.

I question how high we can expect a Westbrook-led team can expect to rate in the "Primary Attack" area. I could be totally wrong in my skepticism - I won't claim to have done an exhaustive study here - but this is a concern of mine.

3. The reality is also that while I credit Westbrook for his ORBs, he wasn't the dominant ORB force on his team - that was Steven Adams, who has been the great Offensive Rebounder of the PBP era. So we should be really careful about saying anything like "but the data says the ORB is great so Westbrook was making up for whatever other shortcomings there were".

People tend to talk like OKC simply had a bad supporting cast, but it's more complicated than that.

4. We should keep in mind that crashing the offensive glass aggressively means sacrificing defense for offense to some degree. This is always a literally true thing, though if a team goes all out with giants to rule the glass on both sides that choice as a whole isn't necessarily a defensive sacrifice... but when it comes to guards, this is I think harder to rationalize.

But as I say all of this
5. The natural riposte to "his team was problematic focused on offensive rebounding" to me would be that that's what the team had to do because they lacked quality role playing shooters, so that bears discussion.

.

[ReggiesKnicks]

There is some good discussion here, but if we want to boil every debate down to "How would Player A do on the 2016 Golden State Warriors compared to Player B", we should probably re-title the project to "Top 25 players to add to the 2016 Warriors".

The real question becomes for the next period, 1976-2000, do we want to ask how players would do on the 2016 Warriors or should we shift our baseline to the 1996 Bulls?

[Top10alltime]

Sorry for missing last round! Voting post for this round:

1. 2024 Joel Embiid (> 2019? How does one pick a year for him?)

Any of 2021-24 is a good year for him to pick. I don't see any case, where 2019 Embiid would be picked.

But it's RealGM, they have never watched Embiid in his life, and have double standards, judging him like he's the GOAT, and putting him incredibly low, it's ridiculous . But that's RealGM, faking no agendas, when in reality they are pushing many. I'm disappointed, that this list is probably the best one

[eminence]

There is some good discussion here, but if we want to boil every debate down to "How would Player A do on the 2016 Golden State Warriors compared to Player B", we should probably re-title the project to "Top 25 players to add to the 2016 Warriors".

The real question becomes for the next period, 1976-2000, do we want to ask how players would do on the 2016 Warriors or should we shift our baseline to the 1996 Bulls?

Clearly the '82 Sixers.

[ShotCreator]

Westbrook was occupying 2-3 panicky, overhelping defenders on his drives in his sleep from 2014-2017, while being able to make practically any pass with either hand at any speed. You put him on a team like 2021 Suns and you would’ve seen ridiculously high level shot making and foul drawing, next to guys who can actually make shots and create their own.


It’s ironic, I didn’t even see this discussion but I said it in the Jokic thread last night, Westbrook is brutally underrated now. And I’m glad LA Bird actually brought metrics to empirically show that.


When he retires, I think he’ll get somewhat of a boost, and hopefully soon because I will have an aneurysm if I have to read people say Cade Cunningham or Darius Garland are about peak Westbrook level.

[LA Bird]

And emphasize that I absolutely do insist that Westbrook never had a place as a star on the greatest team in the history of mankind. If you'd like to take me on that, feel free.

A team with a star point guard already doesn't need a second worse point guard. That's not really news or unique to Westbrook. I mean, does Kobe have a place as a star on the 96 Bulls behind Jordan?

In a nutshell I'd say:

Star Westbrook means that your floor general will be a relatively poor decision maker.

Do you disagree? Presuming so, how?

Relative to who? He is obviously not Nash but in general, I don't see how you can argue peak Westbrook was a poor decision maker.

When KD goes to the Warriors he raises the ceiling because he's super tall, an absolutely elite shooter, and he doesn't dominate the ball. If Westbrook goes to GS instead, what is he doing? Letting Westbrook be Westbrook means abandoning Kerr's offense entirely.

Why is the only scenario again of Westbrook going to GS when they already have Curry and it would obviously be a lot easier for Durant to fill the role of Harrison Barnes? Literally the same could be said if you added any other point guard to GS. Letting Nash be Nash means abandoning Kerr's offense too. Same with letting Harden be Harden. That's the natural outcome when you add a point guard to a team with an offense revolving around another point guard already. The hypothetical of Westbrook going to the Spurs is far more reasonable in evaluating how he fits on a more talented team.

There's only 1 ball, so a) what are you doing with the ball that is so vital that non one else should have it?

The other guards on that 16 OKC team was Dion Waiters, Andre Roberson, and Randy Foye. Who do you want to run the offense through instead?

For (a), if the answer has nothing to do with your superior vision/thinking/passing, but instead is purely about your personal scoring threat, that's not going to scale that well against elite playoff defense.

Westbrook was one of the best passers in the league and in the 16 playoffs was +13.7 on offense against the #1 defense.

You mentioned OKC in 2016 and GS in 2017. Let's take a look first at KD on those two teams in terms of ORtg and other traditional 4 factors on the b-r On-Off team page (eFG, ORB, TOV):

Durant '16 RS: ORtg 116.2, eFG 54.0, ORB 30.9, TOV 15.9
Durant '16 PS: ORtg 113.0, eFG 50.7, ORB 29.4, TOV 14.3

Durant '17 RS: ORtg 120.2, eFG 58.4, ORB 20.9, TOV 14.0
Durant '17 PS: ORtg 125.1, eFG 60.4, ORB 24.6, TOV 14.2

I should point out between 16 and 17 league average ORtg increased from 106.4 to 108.8 (+2.4) and Durant's playoffs opponent rDRtg decreased even further from -3.5 to -1.5 (+2.0) so the raw numbers there overstate the gap between those two years quite a bit.

But I think it's pretty telling that there's one area where OKC's offense is doing a lot better than GS', and that's the Offensive Rebounding.

Now, I'm totally fine praising Westbrook for Offensive Rebounding impact and I don't mean to dismiss it like it's nothing, but there are some things to note about Offensive Rebounding impact in contrast to the other major categories of offense:

1. The other factors (eFG, TOV, FT generation) can generally be grouped in a category of "primary offensive attack", whereas ORB represents a secondary action. While it's a mistake to act as if these are things happening in isolation with each other, in theory, there's really no reason why a team can't be great in both areas particularly if you're talking about a driving guard as being the primary force behind both.

2. So however much we end up crediting Westbrook for offensive rebounding impact, we should be looking at the team's performance on these primary attack factors, and considering how elite things actually look there, and clearly when the ORtg itself lags behind despite the ORB being way ahead, that means that primary attack gap must be quite significant.

I question how high we can expect a Westbrook-led team can expect to rate in the "Primary Attack" area. I could be totally wrong in my skepticism - I won't claim to have done an exhaustive study here - but this is a concern of mine.

3. The reality is also that while I credit Westbrook for his ORBs, he wasn't the dominant ORB force on his team - that was Steven Adams, who has been the great Offensive Rebounder of the PBP era. So we should be really careful about saying anything like "but the data says the ORB is great so Westbrook was making up for whatever other shortcomings there were".

People tend to talk like OKC simply had a bad supporting cast, but it's more complicated than that.

4. We should keep in mind that crashing the offensive glass aggressively means sacrificing defense for offense to some degree. This is always a literally true thing, though if a team goes all out with giants to rule the glass on both sides that choice as a whole isn't necessarily a defensive sacrifice... but when it comes to guards, this is I think harder to rationalize.

But as I say all of this
5. The natural riposte to "his team was problematic focused on offensive rebounding" to me would be that that's what the team had to do because they lacked quality role playing shooters, so that bears discussion.

It's helpful to dive into the four factors but I think you are kind of missing the forest for the trees. Here is Steven Adams' FFAPM and overall RAPM



The 2016 version of him, while still good, is not close to the all time offensive rebounder he is now. And Adams had such an overwhelmingly negative effect on team shooting efficiency and turnovers at the time that he grades out as a net negative on offense, and overall. If we only hyperfocus on offensive rebounding, then yeah OKC had a great supporting cast. But taking everything into account, it's not good at all. Especially if you compare them to what Durant got in Golden State with Draymond, Klay, Iguodala. Swap those three with any Thunder trio and OKC offense (and defense) improves considerably regardless of the drop in offensive rebounding.