Listening to one of these career retrospectives on Russell Westbrook, and I just think so much of the NBA media world is objectively and fundamentally wrong about his 2016-17 MVP season. I've heard and read a bunch about how he was "inefficient" and/or "didn't impact winning," but the opposite was true in the MVP year. On efficiency, the league-average true shooting percentage (TS%) that season was 55.2. Russ (55.4) was above that mark. 15 teams were below it. More importantly, the OKC Thunder were one of those teams below average in 2016-17, but their TS% was 4.3 points better when Westbrook was on the floor. And seven of the nine players who played at least 400 minutes with Westbrook that season had higher TS%s when sharing the floor with him. That brings us to the sometimes nebulous idea of whether or not a player impacts winning or makes his teammates better. Beyond the aforementioned impact on his teammates' scoring efficiency that season, OKC's point differential was around that of a 51-win team when he was on the floor in 2016-17. It was around that of an 18-win team when he was off. That net rating swing was dramatically bigger than those of James Harden and Kawhi Leonard (who finished 2nd and 3rd in MVP voting). On top of all of the above, Wesbrook led the NBA in box plus/minus, wins over replacement player (the cumulative version of box plus/minus), player efficiency rating, assist percentage, points per game, points, and of course, triple-doubles. Westbrook wasn't just a reasonable choice for MVP in 2016-17. He was probably the right one.