Houston Rockets: Russell Westbrook’s shooting struggles are breathtaking

Russell Westbrook’s playoff struggles have been monumental, and it’s looking like the Houston Rockets will need to scheme around him rather than with him.

The Houston Rockets have found themselves in the strangest of places two games into the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. They’re tied 1-1 with the vaunted Los Angeles Lakers, and they’ve gotten to this point almost entirely in spite of their second-best player, Russell Westbrook.

In the final couple of months before the NBA’s season was suspended due to COVID-19, Westbrook was on a tear. Over a 22-game stretch beginning on January 9th and ending March 10th, the Rockets’ last pre-hiatus game, Westbrook averaged 32.2 points, 8.2 rebounds and 7.0 assists per game on shooting splits of .531/.308/.770.

While those 3-point shooting numbers are nothing to write home about, Westbrook was able to rein in the volume and shoot just 2.4 attempts per game. It’s a low percentage relative to the 24.6 field goal attempts he averaged.

During the hiatus, he tested positive for COVID-19 and his arrival to the NBA bubble in Orlando was delayed.

Whether or not his performance in the playoffs has been inhibited by lasting effects of COVID-19, he’s struggled, especially from a shooting perspective. In the playoffs, he has shot 39.1 percent from the floor, 16.7 percent from the floor and a confounding 46.7 percent from the free throw line.

He has a playoff career-low effective field goal percentage of 40.8 percent, and his true shooting percentage is just 41.7 percent. He’s also turning the ball over at an alarming rate with a turnover percentage of 18.3 percent. All of this hopeless inefficiency, and he’s doing it on monstrous volume with a usage rate of 33.8 percent.

Only six players in the playoffs have usage rates over 31 percent, and Westbrook is the only one whose true shooting percentage is under 59.6 percent (Luka Doncic‘s mark). That’s right, Westbrook’s true shooting percentage is 17.9 points lower than the second-least efficient high-usage player.

Russell Westbrook has scored 20 points on 32 jump shots, and that corresponding .625 points per possession finds him in the 3rd percentile. Around the basket on non-post ups, he’s scoring just .857 points per possession, good for the 9th percentile, and his catch-and-shoot jump shot numbers are shocking: He’s 0-for-12 on all catch-and-shoot jumpers. Westbrook is 0-for-6 on guarded jumpers, and he’s 0-for-6 on unguarded jumpers.

Against an elite defense like that of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Houston Rockets are dangerously close to the precipice of simply not being able to use Russell Westbrook in spite of the fact that their whole small ball strategy was designed to optimize him. Sometimes he can spark a rally or his energy can push the Rockets to a win, but how often are those tight games close simply because his shooting and decision-making keep their opponents in games?

Obviously a player of Russell Westbrook’s reputation and star power does not simply get sidelined no matter how lame-duck a coach like Mike D’Antoni might be, but in a world where teams can make tough decisions based solely on the greater good and best chances of winning, that critical moment likely would have come already.

As James Harden‘s outstanding playoff run continues, a new challenge has arisen: Is he good enough to overcome not just LeBron James and the Lakers, but his own teammate Russell Westbrook as well?