Minnesota Sports Forum

I didn't see much of the game, so it's good to read some of the insights on the board. Bazz continues to score at an extraordinary pace, despite playing on a painful ankle.

Dieng must have been the most interesting player on the court last night based on his productive box score...11 points on only 5 shots with 9 boards, 4 blocks, 4 assists and 2 steals. All good except the poor free throwing.

More interesting though is reading some of the observations about Dieng on twitter feeds. Apparently he yelled at a couple teammates for not helping when he switched to cover a penetrator. I like hearing the fire from Gorgui, but Flip actually blamed Gorgui in his postgame comments for being too aggressive on defense. I don't know who is right, but I do know the defensive success against Portland was short lived.

leado01 wrote:Regarding Zach not being Russell, there are a lot of people in OKC that would say that's a good thing. Zach isn't going to be asked to be Westbrook and as poorly as he's shooting, he's still shooting 10 percentage points better than Westbrook did his rookie season.

Huh?

Westbrook shot 39.8%. LaVine is shooting 40.6%. That's less than 1 percent.
As for a few other basic stats:

Westbrook: 15.3 ppg / 4.9 reb / 5.3 ast
LaVine: 9.1 ppg / 2.4 reb / 3.1 ast

Westbrook was one of those rookies who was raw but when you watched him, the talent AND impact was unmistakeable. He'd do something nearly every game that made you go "whoa, this guy is legit" or "how many guys can do that?"

Lavine looks smooth on a pull-up jumper. Maybe that becomes his trademark. But back to your comment... I don't think there's many people in OKC that would trade Westbrook for Lavine (even as rookies).