Fair Enough

A decent point about Westbrook's play.

The primary defender on Westbrook has usually been Jason Kidd, who one would think is way too slow to chase Westbrook around. But Kidd does a brilliant job of funneling Westbrook into Dallas' help defense and uses Westbrook's shaky decision-making against him. The Mavericks' big men (Tyson Chandler and Brendan Haywood) do a great job of helping Kidd, and it all forces Westbrook into bad shots and turnovers.

It sounds a bit trite, but when analyzing Westbrook's struggles this series, the truth is the Mavericks deserve way more credit than they are getting. As erratic as Westbrook sometimes is, he doesn't struggle like this against any other team. He's not beating himself as much as the Mavericks' defense is beating him.