No, the name is what let the Thunder, Nike, and ESPN run a marketing campaign off of them last year to drive ratings. Morey even talked about this on a podcast recently: Any view of triple double as this extremely desirable effort is anachronistic and viewing this through a retroactive lens.
You do realize the same posters saying he was shafted last season are the same who said the same in '15? Fourth? Why do you believe Westbrook should've finished ahead of Durant, Curry or Thomas? Their teams had better records. Do you believe Westbrook still wins MVP without averaging a tri-dub?
Houstunna, the problem is this. There is nothing special about a triple double in a logical sense, other than it's a collection of round numbers. It is directly a product of humans counting in a base 10 system, which itself is random. If humans had settled on base 8 or base 11 systems, then averaging 10-10-10 would be meaningless. Can you truly argue that averaging 10 rebounds and 10 assists is superior to averaging 9 rebounds and 11 assists? No, in fact, the vast majority of basketball coaches would tell you the assist is more valuable and harder to get. In any rational analysis, Harden's extra assists and significantly better efficiency and better team record (whether absolute or relative to preseason expectations) outweighs any "value" of Westbrook's extra rebounds that happened to get him to a round number of rebounds in a base 10 system.
Your argument is that Westbrook’s pursuit of defensive rebounds hurts his team’s chances of winning because it resulted in him not contesting as many perimeter shots. Do I have that right? I am arguing that there is a trade off between the two, and it isn’t at all straightforward that one strategy is more optimal for the Thunder than the other. The same can be said about Harden’s usage on offense and the consequential (maybe inevitable?) lack of energy/attention spent on defense. That is the connection.
Well...yeah...he finished nearly a full assist ahead of him despite a much lower usage rate. Harden's the far more efficient player, should be obvious at this point. The fact that Harden finished ahead of him at all underscores their inherent differences as players and why Harden leads his team better.
Hakeem has several seasons in the top 100 offensive rebounding % so this is a straw man argument. Westbrook did the bulk of his stat padding on the defensive glass which is why he makes an appearance on that list. 9/10.5 rebounds were defensive last year. I’m not sure why you continue to go to bat for Westbrook in this thread.
I’m not surprised by Westbrook’s numbers there, but I admit I didn’t expect the contested shot rate to be so high for Harden. It would be interesting to get more information like how effective the shot contest was (distance from shooter, impact on shooter’s percentages).
My bad, Don. You provided DEFENSIVE stats. Olajuwon doesn't appear defensively until 114th. So, are there 100 better DEFENSIVE rebounders than him? ____ I'm only arguing Harden wasn't shafted. Some posters are so against that theory, that they're arguing, "tri-dubs don't mean anything". Everyone will be happy when Harden wins MVP this year !!!
If you want the epitome of doubling down......Andrew Sharp ladies and gentlemen. https://www.si.com/nba/2017/12/01/russell-westbrook-thunder-struggles-paul-george-carmelo-anthony First, let's discuss the MVP. I voted for Westbrook to win it last season, and I've noticed a disturbing trend emerging early on this year. As the Thunder have stumbled out of the gate, a number of Harden supporters have come out of the woodwork thumping their chest, trying to convince you that the first quarter of the new year proves that everyone got it wrong when they gave the MVP to Westbrook last year. Do not listen to these people. It's true that Harden has been unbelievable in Houston this year. While Westbrook has struggled, the Rockets just went 13–1 through November and Harden averaged 34.9 PPG to go with 10.1 APG. It's also true that supposedly overmatched OKC cast-offs like Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis are thriving in a system that affords them more freedom, and all this is happening while supposed stars like Carmelo Anthony and Paul George struggle to find their footing next to Westbrook. You know what else is true? This year is not last year. If last year's MVP were given to the player who's literally creating the most value, Steph Curry should've won. If we were giving it to the best player, LeBron James should've won. If we were giving it to the player with the best numbers, Harden or Westbrook should've won. Kawhi Leonard might have been the candidate who did the best job approximating elite value in all three categories—statistics, value, talent in a vacuum—but his number tailed off down the stretch. Harden's did, too. LeBron stopped playing defense for two months. Curry was penalized for an uneven start and a loaded Warriors roster. And in a race for a regular season award, Westbrook was having out-of-body experiences at least once a week for the final two months. One night it was 57, 13, and 11 with a mind-blowing game-tying three before beating the Magic in overtime. Another it was 37, 13, and 10 against the Mavericks, including 12 of the final 14 points and another game-winner. In the final two weeks of the season, he put up 45 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists in a three-point win against the Grizzlies. Then it was 50 points, 16 rebounds, and 10 assists, with yet another game-winner to clinch the sixth-seed and eliminate the Nuggets from the playoffs. The value of the triple doubles was overblown and the rebound-padding was corny, but don't let critics pretend that Westbrook's season was anything less than legendary. Watch this clip. It would've been petty and pedantic to vote for anyone but Westbrook. Harden voters will sneer and tell you that the most incredible Westbrook moments came against bad teams that Houston would've dominated. As Daryl Morey complained this summer, "the criteria seems to be shifting away from winning." That's an acceptable argument. But Houston went 4-7 against above-.500 teams after the All-Star Break, so it's not as if Harden was living a dramatically different story on an elite team. If winning mattered most in last year's MVP race, Kawhi was the correct answer. But style points matter, too, and they should. If people want to reduce every MVP argument to questions of efficiency and strict statistical value, they should go watch baseball. Basketball is brought to life by players who amaze you, and for a solid seven months last year, it was impossible to have a conversation about the NBA without flipping out over the madness of Westbrook and everything he was trying to do in Oklahoma City. Then, as the season unfolded and other MVP candidates began to look ever-so-slightly mortal, Westbrook's season got even wilder. He did everything short of hitting game-winners over every single media voter until they handed him the trophy. That's why he won.
wew, he literally admits that he doesn't care about efficiency, only cares about "epic highlites!!!", and that westbrook won the award because of recency bias. Style points matter... its that **** that makes casuals like Andrew think that Kobe is better than Tim Duncan
Andrew Sharp is probably at the extreme end, but how he evaluates things is probably somewhat similar to how a number of other MVP voter credentialed #HotTake voters also look at things. "The Harden Aesthetic" coupled with #Narrative are real.
Edit: hadn't watched it all the way through before I posted. Fool literally talks about Lebron for the whole segment, what BS. Also, I have a feeling that the media is gonna find a way to give it to LeBron if Harden so much as even blinks this year
Yea bleep this guy. He already admitted that he hates the Rockets and refuses to even watch them His favorite players are (as he has also admitted) low efficiency chuckers including, but not limited to, Melo, Kobe, Devin Booker, DeRozen. Admits it was based on narrative, entertainment, barely scraping out wins against nonplayoff teams Uses circular reasoning that Westbrook’s season was legendary because he says it is Conveniently leaves out that of the 7 games the Rockets lost Post ASB, 4 were to GS or San Antonio and 1 was a game against the Clippers that Capela, Nene, Bev, and Lou Will all didn’t even play in. Screw this guy I hope he gets pulled from their Podcast.
I'll argue that having your point guard patrol the lane and ignore perimeter defense when you have capable rebounders is stupid and bad basketball. Adams can rebound. Kanter and Sabonis are leading their teams in boards this year. Taj is up to 7 or 8 on his new team. It's clear that OKC had capable rebounding bigs. It makes no sense to not utilize them and have your point guard ignore defense to sit in the lane and grab them. Not as far as winning games goes. As far as Russ avg a trip dub, he's one of the few capable to do it and arguably the only one that played on a team where him getting it was a team goal.
Look how he labels the Rockets fans own narrative “a disturbing trend” and make the call to action “do not listen to these people”. When he sees a narrative that he doesn’t like he gets just as furious as we all did when we saw what was happening to Harden last year. But what does he do? What are his direct tangible actions? He doesn’t apologize or say “maybe we should look at this again with the new information taken into account”. No he says “Bleep you Rockets fans, you don’t know bleep and your opinions are all worthless”. Why should we let up when he reacts to being wrong by trying to tell everyone that reads his platform to ignore everything we say?
Harden is about to lose to LeBron. His team sucks so he's having to be the hero in the 4th while Harden is sitting with a 20 point lead.
Harden would be averaging 35 points a game if he shot as well in the 4thQ/garbage time as in the majority of the game.
