Seriously. I wish he would just allow himself to shoot 60-70% Giannis style and simply not take any BS jumpers. He doesn’t need to.
Definitely. Giannis shoots about 10% of his shots from 10-23 feet, Westbrook is more like 27% of his shots from that range. Roughly same percentage of 3 point shots too. I get that they aren't the same player, but he's basically a 6'3'' version of Giannis and he should try to model his shot distribution after him as much as possible.
Haven't checked the stats, but I've noticed that he has been driving relentlessly at first half of games, then at the second half he kind of settles for jump shots more often. Think it's a stamina issue, it's tough to keep driving all game and yeah, Giannis just has so much height, if Westbrook drives it without speed due to tired legs he most likely will get the shot blocked. Anyway, he is certainly trending up and I'm really enjoying watching him play. Some boneheaded mistakes and he isn't that great on defense, but he is the reason we even had a shot at coming back against the Spurs.
And we were down 20. Scores 6 in the 2nd and we find a way to win. Too often in the post-KD phase of his career, Russ' offensive success over 48 minutes doesn't seem to jive with actually winning the basketball game.
At this point only the injury riddled start of Gordon’s season and the mess that is Thabo have a worse net rating on the team. Teams are still doing work against us with Westbrook on the floor. https://stats.nba.com/players/advan...0&SeasonType=Regular Season&TeamID=1610612745
Yeah he definitely comes out guns blazing in the first half then burns his efficiency with semi contested long two's later on. Giannis can use those long lateral steps, height, and length to get buckets on occasion but Russ has to go all-in or his drives generally don't work. Which partially explains why he looked so pedestrian for the first part of the preseason when he was just trying to get his legs back from off-season surgery. I think when Gordon comes back that will help stretch the floor even more and also give him another option he can pass too. I don't necessarily blame him for taking a bunch of shots when he's in lineups with Thabo, Clark, PJ Tucker etc. Like what is he supposed to do exactly? lol
Also Russ is up to 0.676 on shots around the rim and 0.767 from the FT line. Not bad at all. If he's 3-point shooting settles to anywhere remotely close to 30% that would be great. The Rockets are 16th on defense this season, which is slightly better than last year so far. Despite no real consistent backup center, Harden playing some backup PF, Gary Clark small ball center, 5'9'' Clemons getting playing time our defensive rebounding % is 77, compared to 74.4 last season. That's a nice 3.5% increase. On the offensive glass, we're 24.5% in 2019-2020 compared to 22.8%, which is a 7.5% increase as well. That's huge. Even though we're generally playing an even smaller than lineup than last season, the fact that Russ is in the lineup pretty much normalizes a lot of the downsides (rebounding) and allows us to have way more flexibility in our rotations. The effect is real.
Though he is third best of the Rockets in PIE, which is NBA.com's equivalent of PER (and prefer this as it isolates the +- influences of which line ups you play with). Gordon is dead last in all different permutations and angles, just further shows how bad he was to start the season. Westbrook is probably playing as good as we can expect. Maybe he can improve a bit more his 3pt percentage and decision making, but last 4-5 games he has been really solid.
Came here to say what’s already being discussed. He has to quit shooting outside 0-3 feet. He’s ruining his efficiency with all the 3 PT and mid-range shots.
Will Russ make the All Star Game this year? 22.8 ppg - 8.1 rpg - 7.2 apg Western Conference Guards James Harden Luka Doncic (Will they put him as a guard?) Russell Westbrook Damian Lillard Donovan Mitchell Devin Booker Chris Paul Jamal Murray Lou Williams Andrew Wiggins CJ McCollum Buddy Hield DeMar DeRozan
He’s shooting 43%, which has far exceeded my expect. I can’t complain about. His shot selections. He has to take those jumper to keep the defense honest. He’s shooting those perimeter shots in rhythm too. NO more hesitation
I think so. Guess it depends on Doncic's position but the rest of those guys are either on losing teams or they aren't as popular as Russ.
Westbrook making the all star team this year would be like the all defensive team awards they just handed to Kobe towards the end of his career. All the result of reputation and stupid voters.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/12/19/21028848/russell-westbrook-james-harden-houston-rockets Statistical update on the Westbrook experiment. Spoiler: still not good Although they did talk about something I have noticed us doing lately. Keeping Westbrook and CC from playing at the same time unless Harden is out there. When Gordon comes back that small ball lineup with Harden and CC resting and Westbrook leading the group could turn out to be a good lineup for us.
I keep hearing about all these new things that Westbrook has brought to the team like transition buckets and raising the floor and rebounding and whatnot, yet I have not seen any actual evidence that it has helped the Rockets as a whole.
Dude's coming off arthroscopic surgery remember how bad Isiah Thomas, Gordon Hayward and even Cp3 himself last year looked to start the season? It's a minor miracle WB is playing as well as he has other players looked washed the year after surgery.
