3 Reasons why a Westbrook for Wall swap would be a mistake for the Rockets

3. Westbrook was one of the best players in the league to start 2020

There has been a lot of talk about Westbrook struggles to start the 2019-20 season and during the playoffs. Westbrook did struggle in the playoffs for the Rockets, as he only averaged 17.9 points and made just 24.2 percent from 3-point range, which both represented career lows in the postseason.

If you just looked at the numbers you might wonder why it wouldn’t be best to trade Westbrook, as these aren’t exactly indicative of a supermax player. But those numbers don’t represent what a healthy Westbrook brings to the Rockets.

Coming into the playoffs, Westbrook not only had to deal with the aftermath of contracting Covid-19, which he was dealing with before the bubble, but he also suffered an injury before the playoffs. These two factors were a big reason why Westbrook’s play fell off in the bubble.

A healthy Westbrook, however, was a top 10 player from January 2020 to the league’s stoppage in March. For those three months Westbrook averaged 31.7 points, which was second in the entire league, and he made over 52 percent of his shots from the field.

Also, for as bad as Westbrook’s 3-point shooting numbers were for most of the year, he made 31.2 percent of his threes during this span. These are the type of numbers Westbrook can still put up in the right system and when fully healthy.

The issue with comparing Wall to Westbrook last year is that Wall hasn’t played since December 26th of 2018, which leads to the second reason why the Rockets shouldn’t even consider this trade.

Next: No. 2