Minnesota Timberwolves dodged a bullet by missing out on Russell Westbrook
By Ben Beecken
Are durability and style of play leading to rapid decline?
Westbrook has been fairly durable over the past few years, but he had back-to-back seasons in 2013-14 and 2014-15 that were significantly impacted by leg injuries, and given his volume of work to this point in his career, the injury history and total number of minutes played have to be taken into consideration.
Westbrook has played 821 regular season games over the past 11 years and 98 playoff contests. Given his style of play, it’s fair to assume that his knees and ankles have undergone more stress than other 31-year-old point guards.
And while Westbrook’s aggressive, dynamic style of play would in some ways jive with Towns, there . are other parts of the former MVP’s game that would be a less synergistic fit.
The main concern still centers around Westbrook’s shooting. There’s only been one season in which Westbrook truly challenged the league-average from beyond the arc, and that was when he shot 34.3 percent on 3-point attempts in his MVP season of 2016-17. Since then, he’s shot 29.3 percent from deep on 4.8 attempts per game.
Perhaps more alarming, his free throw shooting has absolutely tanked. After being an 82.3 percent shooter from the charity stripe through the first nine years of his career and a career-best 84.5 percent in his MVP season, Westbrook has made just 70.1 percent of his attempts over the past two seasons and a ghastly 65.6 percent last season.
While there’s certainly an argument to be made that Westbrook’s decline in usage rate due to the presence of Paul George over the last couple of seasons hampered the rest of his game, there isn’t much of a track record to go on when it comes to Westbrook playing with a star big man. We don’t know how he would handle having to share the ball more frequently in the pick-and-roll, or entering the ball into the post on a regular basis.
Sure, Russ played with Serge Ibaka in his prime and Steven Adams is a fantastic big man. But neither was an All-Star or particularly high-usage players. Spacing and cutting without the ball are key to players on the floor around KAT, and it’s unlikely that Westbrook would have been the best fit in that sense.