Around the NBA - March 2018

A bad shot is a bad shot. Regardless of who shoots it. that said, 37% shouldn't make him immune to criticism for some of his shot selection. If he's in the 40s it's one thing, but he's about league average for his whole career.

 

And I’d ALSO argue that if Lillard played next to a superstar like Westbrook has his whole career his percentages would be even higher. He doesn’t take crazy shots because he’s selfish. He takes them because most of the time, he has to. Westbrook only cares about Westbrook.

 

It's not a double standard. .370 is above league average. Someone posted a while back and they mentioned it during one of the national broadcasts that Steph Curry is the only player who shoots a higher percentage on deep 3s than Dame.

After his 0-4 on 3FGs tonight, including two 4th quarter air balls, Westbrook is shooting .291 3FG%. That's Andre Miller bad. The difference was Miller was smart enough to only attempt one per game.

And that's just poor shot selection. Westbrook also turns the ball over at an alarming rate, especially during the 4th quarter. He had 7 TOVs tonight, including two critical turnovers late in the 4th quarter with the game on the line. Tonight was his 18th game this season with at least 7 TOVs. Dame has a total of two 7 TOV games over the last two seasons combined.

There is no double standard. Westbook shoots like shit with the game on the line and commits countless unforced boneheaded TOVs. Dame doesn't. Anyone who has actually watched them play can see that they are completely different players when the game is on the line. Lillard == come from behind wins. Westbrook == blown 4th quarter leads.

BNM

 

Dame's decision making is far better than Russ'. I'm not arguing that. But he has just as poor shot selection some times.

 

I suppose it depends on how you define "some times". By in large, Lillard wins Portland a LOT more games than he costs us with his 4th quarter play.

The EXACT opposite is true of Westbrook. Every stinking year, OKC is first or second in the league in blown 4th quarter leads. MIN is the other team that's regularly fighting it out with OKC for most blown 4th quarter leads. MIN is understandable, they have been a young team, that's lost a lot of games period. A young team not being able to close out close games is pretty standard stuff.

What's not standard stuff is a 55 win veteran team with a 4-time scoring champion blowing fifteen 4th quarter leads.

BNM

 

Is a 111 ORtg not good? Not to mention has a good enough shooter to stretch the defense out to 30 feet which opens up the floor for the rest of the offense.. Not to mention that he shoots much better during and shoots better during crunch time.

24 points per 100 possessions is a big difference. How the he'll are they even close to similar???

 

Per NBA.com Clutch Time Stats (Last 5 minutes of the game with a 5 point or less differential):

Damian Lillard: 37.5% 3FG%, 0.1 TOV
Russell Westbrook: 21.3% 3FG%, 0.4 TOV

So, Dame shoots slightly better than his season average on 3-pointers with the game on the line. Russ shoots 8 percentage points worse than his already abysmal season average, and commits 4 times as many TOVs.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between Lillard Time and Westbrook Hero Ball.

BNM

 

Dames been better this year. Last year he shot 29% from 3 in clutch. Russ was at 33%. Both equally bad. CJ was an unbelievable 44%

 

It's all about trust. Westbrook wants to win and he doesn't trust anyone but himself. Look at our team. Aminu can miss 5 straight threes but his teammates still trust him and he often delivers a clutch three late in the game. Dame trusts CJ. Dame trusts Nurkic. Everyone trusts Mo from behind the line. You have to earn the trust sure but you must trust each other to win this game.

 

good post, but honestly I don't know if it's really about trust or glory.

 

Really good point.

 

Yeah, if Westbrook couldn't trust Durant, a 4-time scoring champ and member of the elite 50/40/90 club, than he's an even bigger dumb shit than I thought.

In Russ' case, it's definitely all about individual glory. Why the hell else would he freeze out Durant, Harden and PG13? Those guys are all much more efficient scorers than Westbrook, yet he's the one calling his own number with the game on the line.

BNM

 

Vonleh has been having some nice stat lines lately. Put up 14/13 tonight. I’m still bummed we let him go.

 

But but but he gets lots of assists and triple doubles!!! He's a team player!

 

I'm happy for Noah. Always seemed like a good dude and a good teammate. I wonder what kind of offers he'll get this summer and if CHI will match. He's still very young and a solid defender and rebounder.

But, he lost his spot here in the rotation to an even younger player. It sucks that we had to let him go, but it was a numbers game. He was the odd man out and keeping him would have put us over the tax line and started year one of the inevitable repeater tax penalties. Simply not worth it for a guy who wasn't even in the rotation.

BNM

 

They may fawn all over his meaningless triple doubles, but I don't think even the biggest Westbrook fanboi has ever called him a team player. Russ is all about one team, and one team only - Team Westbrook.

BNM

 

Here's a strange site. Usually you see a list of the BEST players in a particular stat. This page lists the WORST players. They call them "trailers."

https://www.basketball-reference.com/trailers/

 

I’m not sure if anyone heard the Charlotte play by play guy on local radio a couple weeks ago but he said they essentially gave up on Vonleh half way through his first year because he just couldn’t make changes to his game or learn from coaching.

He said it would take Vonleh 3 weeks to learn something that Kaminski learned in a day. Mentioned how they were going to move him no matter what that off season and were stoked they were able to get Batum in return because they knew Vonleh was more than less always going to be the player he was when they drafted him. I thought that sounded about right when looking back at his time here.

 

I'm bummed that we got nothing for Batum. And for how slow Olshey is to make a decision early and get something while he can (e.g. Leonard). Charlotte decided about Vonleh fast.

Same Olshey mistake: Thomas Robinson.

 

I actually reckon it’s more about the highlights. The shots like the one he has against Nuggets last year (which was a pretty meaningless shot, to be fair) are what will eventually make his career highlights clip exciting and they appear on so many NBA commercials that Westbrook wants to have as many of them as possible during his career. He probably knows his team is not good enough to win the titles and has been disillusioned with any competitiveness they might provide to the big boys that ever since Durant left it is all about having as many spectacular nights as possible and as many highlight reel moments as he can possibly get.

He seems like the sort of player who would choose one 35 ft buzzer beater against Hawks over five wins in a row against good teams with someone else on his team putting up the big numbers instead.