Matt Moore

He wasn't a great defender that season.

But the reason that the Thunder won was because of their defense.

Their offense actually wasn't great.

It wasn't good.

It was like middle of the pack.

So even though Russ did all these things and averaged a triple-double, which was incredible, and I always try to defend that argument this way, their record when he had a triple-double was like 80%.

They won their games when he had a triple-double.

And so it mattered.

It's like he does.

He puts this production in.

They win the game and you're supposed to win the game.

But when I got to the point of Harden, what Harden did made his team elite and what Russ did made his team OK.

And that to me wasn't enough to get him there.

So I want to voting for Harden that season with Westbrook second.

So Zach Lowe voted Kawhi number one as kind of an indicator of how he felt that season.

I remember that.

I think it was totally like good to vote for Kawhi.

One of the things that I kind of ran into, and I always had this problem with, with Kawhi's game.

You can't say that Kawhi makes other people better.

You just can't, there's no argument you can really make seriously other than like, well, he attracts a lot of attention and like, that's fine, but you got to actually do something.