Cuban’s on Mark about Westbrook
Mark Cuban loves to run his mouth, but every so often, the Dallas Mavericks’ bigmouthed owner has a point. His take on the NBA’s MVP race is one of those times. Because maybe, just maybe, Russell Westbrook doesn’t belong in the deep conversation for the NBA’s greatest honor. And even though that case bucks basic stat-crunching and the conventional wisdom of the basketball hype machine, that’s what Cuban dared to say Sunday.
When asked to handicap the race, he called it a “toss-up” between Cavs star LeBron James and Houston guard James Harden while also mentioning San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard. Where was Westbrook in the discussion? “He’s not,” Cuban said on ESPN. Cue the latest public excoriation of Cuban, even though in this case Cuban is onto something. Westbrook’s tripledouble assault has been historic, has him on pace to become only the second player in league history (Oscar Robertson in 1961-62 is the other) to average a tripledouble for a full season. He’s easily been the most exciting talent of this NBA season, willing the Thunder to a 38-24 record by doing it all.
But Westbrook is also doing it all for a team that’s bereft of talent, and going nowhere. And that’s as much the case for Westbrook as it is the case against him: It’s the Thunder’s middling nature that’s allowing Westbrook to write his name into the record books in the first place.
Make no mistake: Westbrook is a fantastic talent, the most electric, do-it-all (sort of) point guard since Allen Iverson. And the triple-double stat line — leaguehigh 31.7 points per game, 10.6 rebounds per game and 10.0 assists per game — is elegant and eye-catching.
His status as OKC’s lone proven star has many trumpeting his triple-double numbers and looking past the record, without realizing that the record has allowed him to rack up the outsized stats.
The totality of Westbrook’s statistical profile has been accomplished because he plays with so little complementary talent that he freely dominates the ball, a situation destined to lead to big numbers.
Surrounded by few other scoring options, he leads the league in usage rate (42.4), a stat that showcases the frequency with which a player touches the ball. Westbrook’s heavy usage rate is often used to excuse his ugly 5.5 turnovers per game, but shouldn’t it then at least somewhat dismiss his more dominant offensive stats, too? Westbrook’s penchant for turnovers has hurt the Thunder this season, too; the club is 5-6 when he turns the ball over at least eight times.
Westbrook is also far more of a gunner than any of Cuban’s other MVP picks. No player since Kobe Bryant in 2005-06 has shot the ball more than Westbrook has. He squeezes off 24.2 field goal attempts per night and averages 10.2 more shots per game than the next most prolific Thunder shooter, Victor Oladipo.
Cuban’s MVP picks, meanwhile, operate in more balanced offenses; none takes more than Harden’s 18.5 shots per game. Despite that, Harden, who has pushed the Rockets to the third-best record in the Western Conference, is just two rebounds-per-game off of averaging a triple-double for the season.
None of this is meant to dismiss Westbrook’s excellence, because he’s one of the league’s most exciting players to watch. But he’s not an automatic MVP, either, despite the sexy at-a-glance stat line. He’s frequently posting big numbers in meaningless situations: 14 of his 30 triple-doubles have come in games decided by at least 10 points. And his club isn’t considered by anyone to be a contender — unlike LeBron’s Cavs, Leonard’s Spurs and Harden’s Rockets — despite the big numbers.
Some might argue that winning shouldn’t matter — except that winning is the whole point of the game, isn’t it? As much as offensive stats have inflated and deflated all the time, it’s championships that are supposed to matter.
Cuban certainly thinks so. He’d indicated previously that he viewed 50 wins as the criteria for a player to be considered a “superstar,” and he seems to view the MVP discussion in that same light. “The criteria hasn’t changed,” he said. And it’s championships that mattered way back in 1961, too, when Robertson became the first player to average a triple-double over the course of an entire season — and didn’t win the MVP either, losing out to some guy named Bill Russell, the anchor of the NBA champion Boston Celtics.