Season in Review: The Best Player

It’s been fun bringing you the “Week in Review” over the last 10 weeks, but I wasn’t ready for the party to end. And the season being over, a “Season in Review” is the perfect excuse to keep the lights on for a little bit longer in my special corner of the Daily Thunder universe.

Staying true to the Week in Review form, but giving myself a little extra space since an entire season is a wee bit longer than a single week, the “Season in Review” will be a six-part special. Up first will be the best player of the season, followed up by the best performance, the best play, the worst player, the worst performance, and the worst play.

THE BEST PLAYER

No, he won’t win the MVP. He may not even be first team All-NBA. But Westbrook’s season was special, if not historic. To put Russ’s season into perspective:

• Westbrook had eleven triple doubles, which is seven more than any other player in the NBA this season. As a point of reference, Kobe Bryant has 21 career triple doubles.
• Only four players have had a season stat line of 28 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds a game or better: Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and now, Russell Westbrook.
• No player in history has ever had a season with per 36 numbers matching Westbrook’s 29 points, nine assists, and seven rebounds.
• Russ assisted on an incredible 47 percent of teammate field goals when he was on the court. Only two other active players have matched that rate in a season (Chris Paul and Andre Miller).
• Westbrook’s Player Efficiency Rating was 29.12, bested only by Anthony Davis (30.89).
• Oh, and Russ was the league’s scoring champion.

I could dedicate a 3,000 word essay on Westbrook’s accomplishments and fill it up with a boatload of so-called “made-up stats” to tout how great his season was. And you know what, he’d deserve every letter of it. Plus, he does things like this.

Which, really, how many other “point guards” can do that? (Hint: the answer is not many).

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Obviously, Westbrook was the only choice for the best player of the season, but there were others who had great years, namely Enes Kanter and Anthony Morrow.

Let’s start with Kanter, who after the trade turned into one of the best offensive centers in the NBA (post-trade, he was fifth among centers in points per game at 18.7).  With the Thunder, Kanter averaged 18.7 points and 11 rebounds (yes, a double double average) in 31 minutes per game.  He refined his game to reduce the midrange and three-point game, and as a result his TS% shot way up from 54 percent in Utah to 61 percent in OKC.

Kanter is a restricted free agent this summer, which means other teams can sign him to an offer sheet, but the Thunder have the right to match any offer. Despite his defensive deficiencies, he’s played himself into a massive payday. I’m inclined to think Enes will get a $14 million offer, which is a lot of a money, though I sure hope to see Enes with the Thunder next year.

Now, Morrow. A-Mo certainly lived up to his reputation as one of the league’s best sharpshooters from long range. On the season he shot 43.4 percent from three, which is excellent, and just above his career average of 42.9 percent. Over the final three months of the year, Morrow caught fire and shot an incredible 51 percent from three.

Without belaboring the boring details of various advanced statistics, it suffices to say that nearly every advanced metric supports the claim that Morrow had his best season ever, both offensively and defensively (for example, his PER of 14.8 was the highest of his career). We should all be very excited Morrow is under contract for two more years at an incredibly inexpensive $3.3 million next season and $3.4 million in 2016-17 (team option).

Now, I haven’t yet mentioned a couple of other notable names (Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka), but let me explain their absence.

Serge was obviously the the Thunder’s best player for long stretches this season when Durant and Westbrook were out, but this season was mostly a disappointment for Ibaka. That’s not to say he didn’t have a fine season (14 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 2.4 blocks per game), but considering he was a difference maker in the Western Conference Finals against the Spurs last year, expectations were high. Instead of taking another leap forward, Ibaka mostly stayed in neutral. Sure, he added a three-point shot to his game (and shot a very respectable 37.6 percent for the year), but it caused his rebounding rate and block rate to decline and contributed to an overall higher dependency on the midrange and long-range shot (his percentage of shots inside 10 feet were by far the lowest of his career).

And Kevin. We were only fortunate to watch 27 games with Durant in the lineup, but in those games the Thunder went 18-9. I have the distinct feeling the other 54 games would have gone a lot better if Durant were in the lineup. Let’s hope he comes back fully healthy next season and gets one step closer to having his jersey retired in Oklahoma City.