Lost92Bricks wrote:Should be an all-star.
Based on his play so far, absolutely.
Some people might look at his On-Off, which seems underwhelming relative to his usual standards, but it's influenced heavily by the fact that teams are somehow shooting 38.1% from 3 against OKC when he's on, and 25.9% when he's off (that's a difference of 12.2%!). That is a
bizarrely high differential, both for CP3's career and for any player, really. At this point in the season, most players are within +/- 5% for this statistic, which drops closer to 2-3% across a full season, with the biggest results hitting around 5% for all reasonable minute players. In other words, he's had a stupid amount of defensive "bad luck" that has influenced these results. He's been clearly better than he was last year.
The most amazing thing to me is just how well he has adapted to a team with other high-usage perimeter players. He starts off shooting 9.4 FGA and 2.9 FTA per 36 at the start of the game, and ramps this up gradually to 16.9 and 5.5 in the 4th quarter. In the clutch, he has been taking 22.5 FGA and 6.3 FTA for 32.5 PP36, with 6.3 AST to only 2.5 TO. A good part of clutch performance is sheer chance/small sample size theatre, but the dramatic increase in volume jibes very well with what I've watched - he has let guys like Shai and Adams get engaged earlier on, and then takes over. But watching OKC, Shai/Schroder also manage to "get theirs" and play an integral role throughout the game, whether or not CP3 is taking it easy, or trying to take over himself, and we've seen this in games where Shai/Schroder still play an integral role in the closing minutes of games. Shai is currently brimming with confidence, and Schroder is playing his best ball ever.
But at the same time, he has kept Shai/Schroder at around 24% usage (which is lower for both than when CP3 is off) and help generate shots for guys like Adams/Gallo, who are more efficient finishers. He's done really well to manage a variety of shot creators and scoring talents, keeping them engaged throughout the game, whilst still generating good shots for himself and for the team.
He did something similar, yet different with Harden the past couple of years. With Houston, he basically alternated between being some kind of super Patrick Beverley/shorter Draymond Green playing alongside Harden, and then practically turned into Harden (honestly, look at his per 36 mins/100 possession numbers and it's not a crazy claim) when Harden hit the bench. But I'm just as impressed with this - he's been sharing the court with SGA or Schroder practically all the time, often both, and yet he's managed to find a really nice balance between his own production and the production of his other shot creating teammates. I was impressed with how well he magically seemed to swap roles with Houston, but I'm also impressed with how he's managed alongside the other shot creators in OKC.
