(Photo by Larry W. Smith/NBAE via Getty Images)
Good news: Russell Westbrook is now shooting over 40 percent for the year. If there’s one thing that’s keeping him from being mentioned as a legit All-Star or at least an upper level point guard, it’s that. He’s been incredible so far this year, despite some rough patches. He’s averaging 16.5 points per game, 7.4 assists per game and 5.1 rebounds per game. Like I said last week, just one guy can compare in those three categories and his name rhymes with Shashmon Brames.
But so far in six games in January, Westbrook is shooting a solid 45 percent from the field. He’s talked about how he thought he was settling for jumpers and how he wanted to get back to attacking the rim. Attacking the paint is where he’s absolutely lethal, and by getting back to that, he’s become instant dynamite. His pull-up jumper is improving, he’s finishing drives and best of all, he’s taking smarter shots in general.
I think this stat says it all: In November, Westbrook took 39 3-point attempts (hit 14). In December, he took 34 (hit seven). Through the six games this month, he’s taken only three. And two of those I know were clock-running-out-forced-hand desperation attempts.
Last year, Westbrook settled for a lot of jumpers, and even when he got to the rim (which he’s darn near unstoppable at), he wasn’t finishing. He took 58 percent jumpers and 34 percent “close” shots. And you know what, he’s actually taking MORE jumpers this year. He’s taking 63 percent jumpshots, and 32 percent close shots. But here’s where I say his shot selection is better. Last season, he was reckless going at the rim. This year, the jumpers he’s taking (especially as of late) are under control and within the flow. They aren’t bad shots and best of all, he’s making them.
And when you look at where those jumpers are coming from that he’s making, it helps too. Observe:
Shot Locations At Rim <10 Feet 10-15 Feet 16-23 Feet
Player/Year Made/Att. (FG%) Made/Att. (FG%) Made/Att. (FG%) Made/Att. (FG%)
Westbrook 08-09 2.7/5.7 (47.0%) 0.4/1.2
(33%)0.5/1.7
(32%)1.2/3.2 (38.0%)
Westbrook 09-10 2.8/5.6 (50.2%) 0.5/1.2 (43.5%) 0.7/1.9 (38.4%) 1.3/3.9
(33%)
Russ is scoring much better at the rim, but he’s also doing better in the paint as well as the little elbow jumpers he’s become so deft at. He’s hitting a really solid 38.4 percent from there and 43.5 percent from under 10 feet, which is up from 33 percent last year. You’ll see the number of attempts is generally the same, but a lot of that is skewed with late October and November’s numbers. Over the past month, Westbrook has been much more disciplined.
Here’s Westbrook’s hotspots for the season:
Not bad. Like I said, good free throw line and in, and around the elbow. But check his last 10 games:
Better shot selection all the way around. More shots from where he’s capable of making them from. That’s good coaching and more than anything, that’s a credit to Westbrook for being willing to make an adjustment. Of course, he’s got to continue on with this, but I’m sure he will.
Another example of Westbrook’s improvement is to look at when he’s taking shots. Last season, he took 51 percent of his shots within 10 seconds or less into the shot clock. He took 21 percent 11-15 seconds into the 24, 17 percent 16-20 in and just 11 percent with under four seconds left. This year, he’s 46 percent 10 seconds or less into the 24, 20 percent 11-15, 19 percent 16-20 and 15 percent with under four seconds on the shot clock. What’s most interesting is that in the shots he takes 10 seconds or less into the 24, he’s hitting almost 47 percent. After that, everything starts slipping to 41 percent between 10-14 seconds left, 41 percent 6-10 seconds and 33 percent under four seconds. So Westbrook has to force something because of time, he doesn’t do all that hot.
He’s well on his way to becoming the player we envisioned. His shot selection is improving and he’s getting a better feel and handle for how he needs to operate his position. If he continues on with the smart playmaking that he’s doing right now, he’s going to be flat out special. He’s not a great shooter. He’s just not. But when he’s taking smart shots that he’s capable of, he’s not bad at all.
For tables like the first go to hoopdata.com
For charts like the second go here http://www.nba.com/hotspots/
where did you find/make the chart for the shots from various distances? is there a site that has those stats?
Oh Gilbert...
maybe it was mentioned in the thread somewhere, but I really think Brooks would do the team some favors if he played to the squads strenghts a bit more.
The Thunder have a great guard core and two really good (yes Green is really good) forwards. Were I Brooks, I would play to that strenght and play a LOT more small ball with Maynor, Westbrook, Harden/Thabo, Durant and Green/Ibaka. There are not many teams that could keep up with that amount of speed, lenght and athleticism. It would also spread the floor a bit better and bring up the 3pt percentages.
Small ball, small ball, small ball.....
You might be able to live with poor shooting from PG if it was offset enough elsewhere. They are 27th from SG, #2 best from SF and near average from the bigs. But overall they end up in the bottom ten. They made big progress from last place last season but they'll need to do it again to get to average and you really want to be top 10.
@Crow
The types of turnovers durant and westbrook have are different, westbrook tends to throw bad passes more then durant, and durant tends to overdribble and get stripped.
Thunder at PG is still somewhere between 25-27th on overall FG%. That is mainly on Russ, even "improved".
Overall from mid-range Westbrook is hitting 35.7 FG% this season instead of 34.4% last season. But these are the worst shots to take and he is taking almost one more a game.
Overall his season to season results are a mixed bag.
The drop off of the 3 point shot is not surprising to me but I think it is a significant downturn.
Westbrook is best when he shots early... and it is there. After that he should not shoot except when it is really there.
Westbrook is down to 10th on turnovers per game. Durant is up to #2. No other team has 2 in the top ten. Both look better on TO% of possessions used but this is still an issue. Thabo is actually 12th highest on TO% but you don't notice it much because he uses so few possessions.
I think the timing of all this is uncanny. On 12/21 I wrote that piece here about how Westbrook has been jacking up shots more and more as the season progresses, and how his jumper is off. We had just gotten burned by Houston and Russ led the team in shots going 9/21. Then on 12/23 the Thunder acquire Eric Maynor. Since just about that time Russell has been nothing but phenomenal. The timing is just amazing. Not that the article had anything to do with anything, just the whole coincidental timing thing. Maybe Presti is reading here and thought: Man, I got to get a backup PG to push Russ. :O)
Yeah I agree i have been researching for the last few days on what kind of big men we could pick up. It seems like this years crop is a whole lot better than last years. I have no idea what route we should go but they would make nice additions. I think thats more of a reason why we should look to trade. We got cheap options awaiting in the draft for backups. I wouldn't want to be presti on draft day though. I have no idea where what we should draft. Think about it... We have two good points, shooting guards, a slew of pf's and then at sf we have durant, green, and sef that can play that position o and weaver if we still have him. Then well... right now at center we have ibaka, mullins, and kristic. Which I think ibaka and mullins makes for some good back ups who knows how they will develop.
yeah though really we have a few more drafts before we are title ready anyway, and this year there are a lot of decent big man, nba draftnet has us taking pittman from texas, mynba draft has us getting Solomon Alabi, so there are options this year to help us, maybe we can move up a few spots and get aldrich, do the closeness in the western conference if we miss the playoffs we could end up with a fairly good pick.
@f5alcon
Oh no doubt. I'm not trying to diminish the Westbook pick at all. Presti went out on a limb bit and the payoff has been tremendous. I guess I just wish 2008 offered a bumper crop of centers instead of points :)
yeah i agree lately there have been a lot of PGs, but the might be an aberration and a few years from now they go back to being scare.
Even if lopez would have been the better pick we could have done a lot worse in that draft
f5alcon :@Sammy
Maybe even we would have done better last year and we would still be stuck with PJ
/shudder
Whether Presti would have drafted Thabeet is neither here nor there (sorry I brought it up). I'm happy the Grizz didn't even make that an option.
My original point is that point guards were once precious commodities that the market has been flooded with in recent years --> we needed both a point and a center in 2008 --> Presti went with best talent according to his scouts --> if one knew how many capable points were about to come into the talent pool, it would have been wiser to select the consensus #1 center in 2008 and pick from the pg pu-pu-platter because now we've missed our window of picking high in the lottery which is far and away the best means of acquiring a capable center.
and if we drafted lopez i doubt we still would have gotten ibaka later in the draft
@Sammy
yeah lopez+green would have been better then love+ a random, but at th time durant was SG and green was SF and green wouldnt have been slide to PF if we took love.
Maybe even we would have done better last year and we would still be stuck with PJ
Everything is easy in hindsight. A lot of people thought Love wasn't athletic and would get worked by NBA caliber players. A lot of people thought Lopez would never be anything more than a soft, jump shooting center. And a lot of people thought Westbrook was an undersized SG who was too raw to do much early in his career.
If we are going to go back and say we should have drafted others, why not point to easier decisions, like Marc Gasol at the end of the second round in 07? How about Deandre Jordan instead of DJ White? How about DeJuan Blair last year? For that matter, doesn't Tyreke Evans look to be on the fast track to stardom?
We have a good team now, while Lopez and Love both play for the two worst teams in the league. I'm pretty happy with what we have so far.
The whole scouting thing wasn't just a shadow game. The truth is we scouted more than anyone. Chad Ford wrote a column early last year about how massive our scouting force was. He said we were scouting Rubio more than any other team was. (We also HIRED a spanish law firm)
I just think we're super exstensive with everyone.
Presti would definitely not have taken Thabeet. Presti is one of the best at scouting.
@f5alcon
Lopez was projected to go anywhere from 3 to late lottery. Westbrook was projected on many mock drafts to go late lottery, and likely would have if the Thunder hadn't taken him.
Love is a power forward, and I'd rather have Lopez + Green over Love + random center with Green on the bench. I agree, though; man's a beast. I hate UCLA basketball, but I couldn't help myself from rooting for him when he was in college.
@Sammy
We worked thabeet out a lot, i think 4 times, but i still dont think we were going to take him, if anything it was a smoke screen to get memphis to stay away from harden.
@Chas
I probably worded that stronger than I should have. I seem to remember rumblings – including from Chad Ford, who, for whatever faults he has, it cannot be denied he has an inside bead on many FO's line of thinking – that OKC would seriously consider Hasheem at 3 but were convinced Memphis was taking him at 2, and so defaulted to Harden.
@Sammy
Yeah there have been a lot of good PGs recently, and lopez has played well, but 9 other teams passed on lopez as well, so its not like he was the only one who passed on lopez. really westbrook has out performed rose, beasley and mayo, kevin love has been a beast this year. 15.3PPG and 12.5RPG, he is a better rebounder then lopez, so im not even sure if lopez is the best big man option
I remember a NY Mag article posted on here a few days ago talking about D'Antoni having "Thunder Envy." I think Brooks is going to be great coach, and I'm not saying I would rather have D'Antoni, but I would be very interested to see what he would do with our offense. No doubt.
@justin
I agree 100% that Harden in the starting lineup would help Russ, but it's completely dependent on some progression with our offensive system. I don't know that just putting Harden in the starting lineup presents a whole lot of change under the current "system." Our offense is... simplistic?.. to say the least. I wonder how many PPG we'd have without KD this season. Of course, when KD sat out last season, it really seemed like our playcalling was a bit more thoughtful.
justin :Russell Westbrook’s much better distributor than Tyreke Evans.
It is from what we have seen lately. However,the Kings doesn't have any player like KD so I think Evans has to do it by himself more.
RW is improving and hopefully he will keep improve like he has done... One thing though, it could be just me but I found he is really lazy on his defence from time to time. Like Parker, AJ Price, Paul, and even Watson wasn't that bad when they play RW. However, even KD could and has improved his defense so I think RW shouldn't have much trouble to get better on that.
What evidence do you have that OKC was even considering taking Thabeet?
@kev
Neither is Westbrook, though, right?
@f5alcon
Doesn't necessarily have to be Evans. My point is I think until recently, a true point guard was considered a very hard commodity to find, a close second to the true center. Entering the 2008 draft, the Thunder needed to upgrade at pretty much every position except SF so Presti looked at the best talent on the market and decided to gamble on the uber-athletic combo guard. So far, that's worked out about as great as we could have hoped. But then look what's happened: the market's been flooded with young capable talent at the point. The scarce resource became a lot less scarce, while the true center is just as elusive as ever.
Furthermore, it looks like the window has closed on this team acquiring a sure thing big man through the draft, which means we're either overpaying in free agency or looking to trade –– just like every other team. I think Presti knows this; by all indications, OKC would have happily taken Hasheem Thabeet third if he was still there (thanks Memphis!)
Russell Westbrook's much better distributor than Tyreke Evans.
@Sammy
if we took lopez we may not have had the 3rd pick, in order to get evans
Sammy :Tyreke Evans’ stats are much more similar to Westbrook’s than LBJ’s. I wonder… do you think if Presti had a do over, he would have taken Brook Lopez in 2008 and either Rubio or Evans last year?
Evans isn't a point guard . . .
Tyreke Evans' stats are much more similar to Westbrook's than LBJ's. I wonder... do you think if Presti had a do over, he would have taken Brook Lopez in 2008 and either Rubio or Evans last year?
justin :I still think starting James Harden would help Russell a lot, and the offense in general. Hopefully Harden can develop some consistency and earn that spot..
our defense would take a hit . . . against mediocre offensive teams it wouldnt matter - but Harden has regressed defensively (I dont have the numbers in front of me because I am at work) . . . both his on ball and weakside defense is down . . .
I still think starting James Harden would help Russell a lot, and the offense in general. Hopefully Harden can develop some consistency and earn that spot..
@kev
yeah if he has the open 3 he should take it, he does ok when its uncontested
He needs to keep slashing to the hoop, especially against slower defenders, and sometimes find the cutter just to keep them guessing.
He probably is still years away from being an all star but is doing very well for a 2nd year PG who is still learning the position.
I can only imagine what he would be like if we had a post presence that shot 55%+ and could give him 1 or 2 more assists per game
Also his other big improvement is ast/TO ratio
Joel :i would like to see him take less jumpshots and attack the basketball, leave jumpshots to KD.
great defesnive teams will cut off the lane . . .
look and see how good defensive teams play Russ:
a lot of guards are starting to go underneath - there is no reason to go over the top if he isnt shooting the three - then if he drives the lane is clogged . . .
Russ is doing better, but we still need three point shooting - trust me, I am glad he's not shooting it, but thabo and russ need to work on that shot - we can't have all our three pointers coming from the forwards (in the starting lineup) . . .
i would like to see him take less jumpshots and attack the basketball, leave jumpshots to KD.
Well.. you put it much more eloquently than I did. :)
Russ could really keep his FG% respectable if he limits his shot attempts to the foul line extended most of the time.
I like Russ' progression, him and Kevin Durant have exceeded my expectations of them this year..