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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.

I'm saying that Rose simply has no consistent scoring teammate, a Boozer and Deng are inconsistent underachievers. That's no excuse ,it's a fact. That can easily be proven. You are pretty much saying blaming coaching/ pointing flaws in KDs game/implying that OKC's players aren't listening to him. Those are excuses. You can't really prove those things.
Yes there were only 4 PGs with 9 or more assists, that's why they are the elite passers in the game. There are only few of the elite. 8 assists is solid but not anything special. (By the way, a guy like KD can alone give his PG 4 or 5 assists).
I don't want argue every point you have but I believe Rose a better PG than Westbrook. Rose is in a much tougher situation and still makes better decisions than a guy who has a top 3 player in the league as a teammate. If I made a list for PGs it would look something like this
1)Williams/Rose
2)Williams/Rose/CP3
3)Rose/CP3
4) Westbrook
5) Rondo/Nash/JKidd/someone else
That being said, I respect and understand your opinions.

Fair enough, we won't see eye to eye. I think you can possibly call Boozer an underachiever, but I think Deng does what about is expected. He's not a superstar nor paid like one. As for Noah being equivalent of Ibaka/Perk....you are giving Perk too much credit. Perk is one of the worst offensive options that actually has a starting job. Deng is far superior to anyone other than KD on the Thunder's supporting cast and so is Boozer. KD is superior to both of them obviously. You can include Harden if you want, but the majority of the time he is on the floor Westbrook is not.

He was required to do heavy lifting in the playoffs and could not get it done against a good team. He made bad decisions just as RW did and often times showed that he wasn't the MVP.

Judging by your list you are a DWill guy. As a true PG I would go CP3 then DWill and then the other two. Obviously they are all studs and you could ask NBA GM's around the league and get different orders of the 4 as well...so there probably isn't a "right" answer...just an opinion supported by the facts as you see them and also by what you think is more important. I appreciate the dialogue as well as your input and opinions.

Last edited by Stauder at 6/21/2011 8:05:04 PM

Agree about Perk. Purely a defensive guy IMO. Boozer didn't show up as much as I thought he would in the playoffs, and the Heat definitely exploited that. That said, I think Westbrook is better than Deng. Deng is better defensively, but Westbrook's defense isn't horrible. I think Deron would be better if he didn't have to give the ball to Lopez and Kirilenko (in Utah).

I'm a DWill guy, mainly because I'm an Illinois guy. :-)
Fine, Deng isn't really an underachiever, it's that he just doesn't consistently bring what the Bulls need. Okay maybe I overrate Perk but I really feel that Noah isn't all that and he is about as good as Ibaka.
Deng and Boozer maybe be better than the rest of the thunder's supporting cast but it isn't always quantity, it's quality. I'd take KD on my team over BOTH Deng and Boozer.
Rose did all the heavy lifting when it mattered the most. He couldn't beat three NBA all stars by himself....

What are you talking about. Deng was one of the most constistant players in the league. He always gets 17-20 points but Boozer was a B-U-M. I watched every single bulls game last season.