Triple-threat star is stat incredible
SO … we can spend some time, and some paragraphs, on all the troubling things the Knicks put on display Monday night at Madison Square Garden. We can start with Carmelo Anthony and his 4-for-19 rock pile of a night. We can talk about the two points and three rebounds the $72 million man, Joakim Noah, posted.
We can even take the sparring gloves to Kristaps Porzingis, who almost never gets targeted with them, and mention that while he dropped 21 points on the Thunder he was invisible on the other end, he had just five rebounds, he was pushed around plenty while Oklahoma City rolled to a 53-40 advantage on the glass including 17 — 17! — offensive rebounds.
The problem? None of those things is going away anytime soon. We can probably address all of them Wednesday night in Minneapolis, truth be told.
And, besides: That would be burying the lead.
“It’s easy to talk about a guy on paper,” Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said of Russell Westbrook, after the Thunder had ended the Knicks’ homecourt win streak at six with a thorough 112-103 pounding. “But then you have to guard the guy.”
Or simply watch him blitz you, which was the defensive strategy of choice for the Knicks for most of the night as they watched him fall just one assist shy of a triple-double in
the first half, as they admired the 27 points, 18 rebounds and 14 assists he hurled at them.
Westbrook’s coach, Billy Donovan, who gets to watch him every night, who once upon a time was a pretty fair point guard of his own, just shook his head when he was asked to describe the latest chapter of this preposterous 19-game start to his star’s season.
“He’s going to put up numbers because he has ability, because he plays hard every single night, because of his gifts,” Donovan said. “But he’s doing a lot of other things the stat sheet doesn’t show. He’s a complete point guard all the way around.”
One game shy of the quarter pole of this season, though, the stat sheet does show plenty, shows as much, in fact, as any player’s stat sheet has going all the way back to 1961-62, the year Oscar Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists in 79 games for the Cincinnati Royals, then 28.5 points, 11,0 rebounds and 11.0 assists in a brief four-game playoff stint, too.
Westbrook’s splurge Monday upped his averages to 31.0 points, 10.4 rebounds and 11.3 assists. Is that sustainable?
“Winning,” Westbrook said, “is what’s sustainable.”
What’s impressive about what Westbrook is doing is that not only is he reluctant to talk too much about it, his teammates don’t seem nearly as impressed as you would think for a group that gets to watch this show every day, every night, every practice.
Steven Adams (14 points, 10 rebounds) laughed as he talked about going up for a rebound Monday night that he swore was all his before realizing that soaring higher than even his outstretched fingertips was Westbrook.
“You got it mate,” Adams said.
“Nothing he does surprises any of us,” said Enes Kanter (27 points, 10 rebounds).
It didn’t surprise Derrick Rose, that’s for sure. Rose was the Knicks’ lone bright spot, single-handedly keeping the Knicks close in the fourth quarter, clearly inspired by the match-up with Westbrook. Back in 2008, after all, Rose went first in the draft, Westbrook fourth. Rose had the early speed in the rivalry. But Westbrook owns all the headlines now.
“It’s always fun playing against a player like that,” said Rose, who did outscore Westbrook, 30-27, but had more modest totals of seven rebounds and four assists. “He’s so dynamic with what he does and how he plays. He’s figuring out with that team what to do and they’re following behind him.”
Maybe straight toward history. This is the kind of thing baseball fans spent decades debating, wondering if anyone after Roger Maris could ever hit over 60 home runs again, or if any pitcher after Denny McLain could win 30 games again. Forty-nine years later, nobody has come close to McLain. Fiftyfive years after Maris, no one has approached Maris without pharmaceutical assistance.
“It’s fun to compete at a high level,” Rose said. “But I don’t compete for records. I compete for my team.” What you saw at the Garden on Monday night? That’s the beautiful benefit of that.