“People are just not going to guard Russell Westbrook in the Playoffs”

You're absolutely right.

I'm not a fan of Westbrook and his stat padding style of basketball. I've said that a million times. You can dig through my history and find a treasure trove of quotes saying so.

However, since you snooped into my history, you should have also seen what I said in the Westbrook trade thread:

Finally, I have never defended Westbrook nor praised him any of my post-trade posts. I don't wear the rosy shades and drink the Kool-Aid like the rest of Clutchfans. I have a wait-and-see approach to Westbrook in a Rockets uniform before I make a judgement on him. For now, I simply accept that Harden and Tilman made the call for Morey to do this trade.

Even the in post you replied to in this thread I never said anything in defense of Westbrook. Instead, I wanted to show how ESPN is full of hypocrites. They are the ones who were obsessed with Westbrook's triple-doubles, showered him with every praise imaginable, voted him for MVP without skipping a heartbeat. And now they all want to backtrack from everything they said and call Westbrook a failure?

That duplicity is on them, not me.

I've always been anti-Westbrook, but I am now trying at the very least to remain neutral for the sake of being a life-long Rockets fan. So yeah I'm cutting Westbrook a lot of slack right now and I'm guilty of that. You got me there.

 

Lol, they're going to not guard when of the biggest offensive threats in the league? Good plan!

 

Garbage Network

 

ok .. Dont guard him, see what happens. Cmon with this dumb takes.. the guy is an MVP player.

 

see what happens? we've already seen what happens time and time again in the playoffs

 

Ok, but how are they gonna stop his drives?

 

By not guarding him apparently! Wooooo.

 

why are you asking what it says when you posted it?

 

probably the same way the rockets did two years ago

 

Yeah, when we went small to close games, last year's lineup always had the worst shooters like PJ in the corners - I expect the same this year - PJ in one corner, Russ in the other...but the bigger problem will be finding a way to utilize Russ' shooting to keep teams honest while Tucker and Capela are already in the game.

 

What Portland did and other teams are doing to him is back way off of him and encourage him to pull up from 3 or pull up for his “cotton shot” two. It’s hard to drive past someone that’s playing over 5 feet away from you. With that much space it negates his speed advantage because he has defenders waiting for him in the paint. This is why his shooting around the basket fell off so much.

He just has to get into the gym and shoot better. I don’t think it’s realistic to ask him to stop shooting. He has to play his game. If he can make players come out and defend him, he can blow by them all day long, with space. If he can’t make teams pay for sagging off then MDA and Harden will have their jobs cut out for them.

 

What he really should do is just put is head down and keep his run towards the basket. Force them to D up at the rim and most likely foul since WB with a full head of steam is really hard to stop or completely back out under the goal to avoid the confrontation.

 

Yeah, if you're defending Westbrook, you don't want him to get up to full speed going to the rim. Give him enough space to get his speed up and it's really hard to defend him. Same in the open court, when he's full speed he's impossible to stop.

Westbrook is like Rodman use to be. Rodman couldn't shoot but you still couldn't double off of him because you'd turn him loose on the boards.

If the plan is to back off of Westbrook and simply plan to meet him in the lane then that's a great situation for the Rockets. However, I don't believe that NBA teams will try and do that.

 

Well OKC also didn't surround him with a ton of shooters, so even if he drove they could help off crappy shooters like Roberson. That wont be the case anymore

 

roberson hasn't played in over a year

 

'Westbrook is about to win the MVP again

 

both jerami grant and pg13 shot near 40% last year. Ferguson was at 36%. not sure those really qualify as crappy shooters

 

I'm curious why you think teams won't try this when we've we've seen it work against him. Why will it be different in Houston? Why do you think it's a great situation for the Rockets, when it wasn't great for him in OKC? Is it confidence in our coaching staff?

 

I think the two man game with Harden and Westbrook will be surprisingly effective. Even if teams don't respect his shot, he can hit the open 3 and his cuts to the basket are lethal. Westbrook is harder to stop from getting to the rim without the ball than he is with the ball. With a passer like Harden, this should work out well. I think he gets 8-10 uncontested baskets a game 2 or 3 from dared to make 3's, 3-4 from beating everyone down court after a rebound, 3-4 from quick cuts to the rim.

 

You named all their good shooters, and both grant and Ferguson shot fewer threes per game than even Gerald green.

They didn't have zero shooters, but they had a lot less shooting than the rockets