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I like basketball.

Rose averages less turnovers than Westbrook for one. Westbrook also has an elite player on his team(Durant) while Rose has no other consistent scorer on the team.Rose has to shoot a lot due to the failure of the Bulls management and the inconsistency of Carlos Boozer/ Luol Deng. Westbrook constantly takes quick shots at crucial moments of the game when he should be passing it to Durant. Westbrook was thrown under the bus because he often cost his team wins with his "I'm an elite player, let be the hero instead of Durant" mentality.

1. Kobe
2. Dwight Howard
3. Durant
4. Lebron James
5. Dwayne Wade
6. Melo
7. CP3
8. Dirk Nowitki
9. D-Rose
10. Amare Stodimare

I think Rose just got over hyped into an MVP this year.

I guess I could see this. But at the same time I have to agree that D Rose was the MVP this season. The Bulls were able to claim the number 1 seed even with the injuries to Noah and Boozer. Who else would you consider for the award?

The difference was not great for TO's between the two. The difference in assists was just as great in favor of RW. The thing about RW is that he HAS to score for the Thunder to be successful just like DRose does. Durant is a great scorer. However, Rose has more options than RW. Westbrook literally has nobody besides Durant for most of the season. James Harden came on certain games in the playoffs and was pretty good off the bench during the season, but he was inconsistent AND played a lot of his minutes with RW on the bench. I think people over analyzed the playoffs and threw Russ under the bus for them. If you watched the regular season closely you would understand a little better I think...and maybe the same could be said of me for DRose. I understand that KD is far better than anyone Rose has, BUT I think Deng, Boozer, Noah, Bogans, Brewer, Watson, etc... are better overall at scoring than Harden, Ibaka, Perkins, Sefalosha, etc... so it evens out pretty well IMO.

As for the "I'm an elite player, lets be the hero instead of Durant" mentality...I just don't see that. If you watch the end of games clearly you will see that for one, Brooks can't call an end of the game play, and two, Durant moves terrible without the ball! KD should take the last shot, no doubt. However, when he took the last shot in the playoff games you were watching it was usually 5 or 6 feet beyond the 3 pt line and the success rate was zero...just like Russ. It's really hard to blame RW when KD doesn't know how to get open and when he is not set up to be successful. I agree Durant is the better option, but I disagree that RW has the attitude you stated. I think the ENTIRE Thunder team is very young and needs to grow up to win at an elite level like the Western Conference Finals and many of the late game breakdowns came because there was little offensive flow and RW was hung out to dry at the end of shot clocks. I'm not saying he is infallible at all, but I do think RW matches up very closely with Rose at this point in their careers.

Dwight Howard. Kevin Durant. CP3 because he did it without ANY help...especially when West went down. (not saying he is the best overall player, but meant more to his team this season.). I would even give it to Lebron over him in the regular season. I know Lebron had Wade, but he also was an absolute beast on defense. I say this even though Lebron is my absolute least favorite player.

If I had to pick 1, I pick Dwight Howard. Without him, Orlando is absolutely terrible. The bulls are probably bad too without Rose, but the difference DW makes on offense AND defense is astonishing.

You brought up the difference in rebounds earlier which also was not great either. I think turnovers are more important with a PG than rebounds are. Again the difference in a assists are irrelevant to me because it's just .5(7.7 to 8.2).And since guys can piled up on assists nowadays(Lebron gets like 7 assists per game), I think anything under 9 assists is nothing special. Westbrook has more weapons on his team(ie. Durant). Deng, Boozer, Noah, Bogans(terrible), Watson,etc. are probably equal to the the guys you listed, because Boozer and Deng underachieves. And when you add Durant that tips the scale.

As far as your 2nd paragraph, I may have exaggerated with Westbrook's mentality. I also don't see why Durant doesn't get the ball more in situations like that, it's the NBA, Durant doesn't have to be wide open, you just gotta get him the ball and let him create a shot. And as far as the lack of offensive flow, that's usually the PG's fault especially with a good offence team like OKC. I think you are making a lot of excuses for RW. I'll take Rose any day over him, though it is close.

Hmmm I do agree with the other guy that Rose has more options. The first 5 of the Thunder pretty much only has 1 offensive option besides RW himself (Durant). Rose might not have a great guy like Durant with him, but at least he has several players to which he can pass.

So I don't agree at all that Deng, Boozer, Noah are equal offensively to Sefolosha, Ibaka, Perkins


Sefolosha - terrible offensively (5.1 PPG........ as a starter)
Ibaka - starting to improve on the offensive end now...but still not good (9.9 PPG)
Perkins - can hardly score (also 5.1 PPG during the season at OKC)

vs

Deng (17.4 PPG during the season)
Boozer (17.5 PPG during the season)
Noah (11.7 PPG during the season)
Bogans (4.4 PPG during the season)



Only when Harden is on the floor do the Thunder really have a 3rd option.

I'm no more making excuses for RW than you are for Rose. The guy above ^^^ helps prove my point about who surrounds Rose on the floor at any given moment as well.

Now if you want to say that rebounds are irrelevant then so are turnovers as the discrepancy is about the same. As for assists I disagree with your assessment that anything under 9 is nothing special. There were 4 PG's that averaged 9+ assists this season. 4. That's it...8.2 is pretty solid when you ONLY have Durant to pass to. RW is also 4th in the league in steals which isn't always a telling stat, but it helps cushion his turnovers and is a reason why he has a better efficiency rating than Rose.

Also, Durant doesn't get the ball sometimes because he is terrible at getting open. Now you say he doesn't have to be that open, but at the end of games they suffocate him and force him to catch 6 feet off the 3pt line and he promptly dribbles a couple times and fires up a 28 footer and misses. That was the routine in the playoffs. He rarely runs off screens and he doesn't run close enough to screens to get open. Add in the fact that people hedge and help on those screens and he isn't open in a good position to get him the ball. Especially from the in bounds play...which is often times when you get the ball for the last shot. His other move in getting open is trying to post up from the elbow extended. If someone plays high side then it's tough to get him the ball because he stands straight up and doesn't get big. Is Durant a top 3 player in this league? Absolutely, but that does not mean that RW should be thrown under the bus and KD is infallible.

I agree that Russ doesn't always make great decisions. I probably watched between 40-50 thunder games this season and every playoff game. I feel like I have a good grasp on how to evaluate them as a team and dissect certain situations. I am a coach by trade and that's how my brain works. Does that mean Russ is definitively better than Rose? Not at all, but I believe they are in the same realm in a LOT of ways. Rose also makes plenty of bad decisions and Miami showed that all you have to do is double team the guy and he struggles. Same thing happened to Russ. Stop his penetration and he is less effective.

The difference sometimes is that Thibodeaux is a better coach than Brooks when it comes to offense I believe. You are right that a PG creates offensive flow at times, however when I am yelling at the TV because the Thunder train wreck of an offense isn't moving whatsoever, what else can Russ do but drive and create? There were a couple times in the playoffs that Brooks pulled Westbrook because they didn't run a half court set....the funny thing was that Russ had actually called plays those times and the likes of KD, Perk, Sef, etc... just stood there. That's why instead of being up 3-2 in the Dallas series after 5 games, they lost 1-4 and gave up big 4th quarter leads.

I'm not trying to get you to believe that RW is a better player overall, but I am trying to get you to see that they were very similar this season. So similar to the point that RW had a better PER, but not by much.

In no particular order, here is my top current NBA top 10

1- LeBron James
2- Kobe Bryant
3- Kevin Durant
4- Dwight Howard
5- Derrick Rose
6- Dirk Nowiski
7- Chris Paul
8- Carmelo Anthony
9- Blake Griffin
10- Dwayne Wade

But during the playoffs the Bulls only really had one option, that was Rose who did all of the heavy lifting. Noah's points are deceiving as he is only as good as an offensive option as Perkins or Ibaka, in my opinion. I'll change my statement, RW's supporting cast is superior(offensively) to DRose's supporting cast when Kevin Durant and Harden are included.