Los Angeles Lakers: 3 bold predictions for Russell Westbrook
By Jason Reed
2. Russell Westbrook has the most efficient offensive season of his career
Russell Westbrook, despite racking up the counting stats and getting accolades as a result, is not an efficient basketball player. That is one of the biggest knocks against him and is why the advanced numbers do not love him. Why he has not been a winner yet in his career.
Effective field goal percentage is a really good statistic to use to see just how efficient a player is shooting the basketball. It takes into account that threes are worth more than twos which are worth more and ones.
It is better than a stat such as offensive rating because that is so team dependent. Stats such as offensive win shares and Offensive Box Plus/Minus are also good, but eFG% helps paint how efficient someone is.
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Westbrook is not efficient. He has never posted a season above a 50% eFG% with his career-high being 49.3% in 2019-20 with the Houston Rockets. For comparison’s sake, LeBron James has a career eFG% of 54.3% and he is not the greatest of shooters. He also hasn’t posted a year below 50% since his rookie year.
This will be the year that Westbrook gets above 50% as it is the year in which he is asked to do the least. I genuinely do think LeBron James is going to get to him and we are going to see a player that is not forcing the issue and instead is capitalizing on the talent and spacing around him.
We saw the positive impact that James Harden had on him as a facilitator, just imagine what LeBron James can do, especially when the biggest threat off-ball is always going to be Anthony Davis.