I swear, Smith can be relied on to have the worst takes every single time. I don't like Kawhi but he's one of like 3 players who have proven they can be The Guy on a championship team over the past decade, on what planet is he "one of the worst superstars the game has seen"? Ridiculous.
Its hard not to feel sorry for lac. With George and Leonard its impossible to contain suns' superstars. Russ gave it all and dominated suns offensively but rest of the team looked uninterested (eg and zubac especially) Phoenix looking to end series at home in game 5. Without kawhi, its so hard for lac to fight back and even he'll be on the field 100% healthy physically, I'm not sure how the sentence on his sister can affect him.
I never thought Russ should be the primary ballhandler on a contender, he always took way too many threes and long twos and was never efficient enough. But he has still been a great player in the league who has generally played hard and was one of the best pure athletes I've ever seen, and I haven't heard many actual players badmouth him about anything. There's a world where he was a 6th man most of his career, played a key role on multiple championship teams, and was thought of as the best bench player of all time. If things had come out that way he'd be talked about a lot differently. Sadly that wasn't the case.
I do think the Russ hate gets way out of hand sometimes, a first ballot HOFamer, but some people act like and some people I've seen literally say here that he can't play basketball. I get galled a WOF or something though but I also defended Dwight and that annoyed some people. Dudes just age differently, especially the guys that rely a lot on athleticism. That's why I always say the guys still playing at an all-star level at 35+, appreciate that. That's really hard to do.
Westbrook's problem (same with guys like Dwight and Melo) isn't that he is a bad player. It is that the ego is too big for him to admit his own weaknesses. These are great players. But they don't want to play within their own limitations and they have no self awareness where their weaknesses are to try to improve on themselves. I believe if OKC played Harden as the starting PG and Russ as their energizer 6th man off the bench, history would have been very different. Instead, Westbrook turned into a hero ball alpha dog who lost them as many games as he won them. And Harden was traded as a beta.
I don't think it's because role players like Gordon and Zubac are disinterested. It's always what seems to happen when an offense becomes too Russ-centric. Westbrook's numbers might look good, but other players have a hard time getting involved and contributing to the offense. But the Clippers don't really have any other option at this point than giving the ball to Westbrook and praying for a miracle that will likely not come.
It was a problem for before WB, Kawhi or PG13 one of them would be injured nonstop and the other players weren't winning enough, taking turns.
Kawhi stopped being healthy since Toronto and his degenerative knees will just keep getting worse and worse.
I agree, it's not a winning basketball but other guards and wings proved they are not good desicion makers at first half with a lot of bad shots and turnovers.If at least one of the superstars were healthy, the game could be a lot different.
As a basketball fan i always want to see best players available on court. Kawhi and Paul are 2 guys that i like basketballwise. That's just cold dude. I'm shocked how many people felt the same way as you do. Stay classy no matter what others say or do.
