sabonis was a rookie, playing 20mpg and shooting 40% from teh field and jacking up 3s
hes now a 2nd year player whose playing more with his back to the basket
victor oladipo iis a number 1 option for the first time in his life
enes kanter is putting up the same numbers he did last year just that hes getting no minutes and is stll a black hole on d
The narrative by Westbrook defenders last year wasn't "these guys are being used wrong", it was "all these guys are trash."
They're proving that they're clearly not trash.
Last year there were posters calling Sabonis a D-league player and saying that Oladipo wasn't good enough to be a #2.
Now we see Sabonis averaging 13-9-3 on 60% shooting and Oladipo putting up a great 23-4-5 on 46/45/81 plus solid D as the #1 for a team in playoff position.
Kanter averaging 14 and 11 on ridiculous 64% shooting while McDermott scoring 8.4ppg on 48/45/83 splits as the #3 and #4 scorers for another playoff team.
"Russ has no shooters so he has to put up 28 shots/game", yet 2 of the top 20 3pt% guys and 3 of the top 6 FG% guys in 2017/18 were on the Thunder last year.
Take those four guys, add Westbrook, Adams, Taj, and All-Defensive Roberson, and you have EIGHT players who were clearly good enough to be real contributors on a playoff team. Nine if you include Grant as the energy guy off the bench.
But we were being told all season that it was Westbrook and a bunch of trash players who shouldn't be anywhere near the playoffs.