The Undeniable Russell Westbrook Is The Rightful MVP
Russell Westbrook’s monstrous 2016–17 campaign is leaving his challengers in the dust. Westbrook is the real MVP and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop him.
Russell Westbrook has accomplished the impossible. He’s not only managed to put together one of the most spectacular seasons in NBA history, assembling stat lines that would require fact-checking on a nightly basis if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s made monstrous triple-doubles de rigueur. Not only has he taken a team worthy of the lower reaches of the lottery to the sixth seed of the Western Conference.
He’s done so in such a fashion that he’s made a triple-double season average a polarizing thing. While his league-leading scoring average of 31.8 points per game and his third-best average of 10.4 assists per game are impressive, he can’t seem to shake the label as a mere stat-stuffer when it comes to the fact that he’s 11th in rebounding with 10.7 per game.
It’s no secret that the Oklahoma City Thunder bigs box out on defensive rebounds for Westbrook. At a glance, it can seem like a team-wide plot to get him his nightly triple-double (and make no mistake, it certainly has that welcome effect as a byproduct), but there’s more to it than that. In fact, Westbrook’s rebounding is elemental to winning for the Thunder, a team that struggles to score in the half court at a rate of just 0.911 points per possession.
The best way to immediately transition from defense to offense off opponent misses is to have a skilled and athletic ball handler grab defensive rebounds and move up court instantly. Should Steven Adams collect a defensive rebound, the split second it takes to grab and then transfer possession of the ball to Westbrook can be all it takes for a defense to get back and find its spots on the floor to hinder the fast break. Instead, Adams or another big can box out so Westbrook can get the board himself and dart up court with a full head of steam.
You can stop Westbrook if you’re set up in a stance defensively with a scheme behind you. Good luck stopping him while you’re backpedaling or running beside him.
Westbrook leads the NBA in transition opportunities with seven per game, 1.3 more than second-place John Wall. He also leads the league in transition field goal attempts at 4.1 per game.
While oftentimes scheming to get certain players defensive rebounds at the cost of more effective team rebounding can reduce your overall rebounding percentage, that’s quite the opposite with Westbrook. When Westbrook is on the floor, the Thunder have a staggering rebounding percentage of 54.2 percent. When he’s off, the Thunder have a meager 50.8 rebounding percentage.
This can’t simply be accredited to the help Westbrook gets from bigs. When he’s on the floor without Steven Adams, the Thunder still have a 52.8 rebounding percentage. When he plays without Enes Kanter, it’s 53.6. There appears to be no downside for the Thunder when they scheme to get Westbrook rebounds. They get fast break opportunities without having to sacrifice any real probability of collecting defensive rebounds. As a result, the Thunder are the second-best rebounding team and the fourth-best defensive rebounding team in the NBA this season.
Thanks in no small part to these remarkable rebounding numbers, Westbrook has amassed perhaps the most impressive statistical campaign in NBA history. He’s not only a virtual lock to finish the season as just the second player to average a triple-double in NBA history, his campaign has dwarfed Oscar Robertson’s 1961–62 season in every way possible.
While Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 11.4 assists and 12.5 rebounds per game, he did so in an era where starters played almost every minute of much higher paced games. Robertson played 44.3 minutes per game in 1961–62, and his Cincinnati Royals (a predecessor of the Sacramento Kings) played a staggering 124.9 possessions per game. In comparison, the Brooklyn Nets lead the NBA in pace this year at just 103.5 possessions per game.
This means that Russell Westbrook’s averages of 31.6 points, 10.7 rebounds and 10.4 assists per game are all the more spectacular. He’s done this in just 34.7 minutes per game, and the Thunder play at a pace of about 98 possessions per game. If we extrapolate his production at the same minutes and pace that Robertson played at, Russell Westbrook would average a spectacular 51.4 points, 17.4 rebounds and 16.9 assists per game.
Robertson’s season was historic, but Westbrook’s campaign is so monolithic that the two are not even in the same stratosphere.
However, stats alone do not an MVP case make. The raw numbers are phenomenal, but you can’t be a candidate if you don’t get wins. The vast preponderance of MVPs have come from one of the top two seeds in either conference, and the Thunder are almost certainly going to be the sixth seed in the Western Conference. Why should MVP voters expand their range to a player from a team so lowly seeded?
The answer is quite simply that the Thunder are almost certainly the worst team in the NBA without Westbrook. When he’s off the floor, they’re outscored by 9.1 points per 100 possessions. To put that number into context, the worst net rating team this season is the Los Angeles Lakers, and they get outscored by 7.5 points per 100. When Westbrook is off, the Thunder have an effective field goal rate of 48.4 percent and a true shooting rate of 51.4 percent. Both of those rates would be the worst in the league. Adding him to the lineup brings them to slightly above league-average in both categories.
When Westbrook plays, the Thunder produce a net rating of +3.5. That rate would tie them with the Cleveland Cavaliers at seventh in the NBA. In effect, Russell Westbrook is the difference between the Thunder being the NBA’s worst team by a wide margin and a top-seven team.
When it comes time to winning close games in the clutch, there’s nobody better than Russell Westbrook. He is ball dominant to an unbelievable level with a 62 percent usage, and he’s actually slightly more efficient in the last five minutes of close games than he is on average. He has a true shooting rate of 56.4 percent in the clutch, while it’s just 55.5 percent overall. His turnover rate plummets from 12.23 percent overall to just 7.3 percent in the clutch. All of this is at a faster pace than average as well, as the Thunder play 105 possessions per 48 minutes.
In essence, when it matters the most, Westbrook is at his best. He’s at his most aggressive, most fast-paced, most effective and most deadly. The Thunder are 24–15 in clutch games and as a result have outperformed their expected Pythagorean win-loss record by three games this season. It’s safe to say this team that gets outscored by near-double digits when Westbrook sits wouldn’t have been in 39 clutch games this season without his services.
No other player has the resume Russell Westbrook has amassed. No other player has had the impact on their team winning games that Westbrook has had, no other player has won game after game for their team by sheer fury of will like Westbrook has. In this historic season full of spectacular campaigns, there’s no equal for the scorched earth that Russell Westbrook has left in his wake.
