HALLELUKA: Luka Clinches All-NBA 1st team. 4th in 5 years

[SleepingHero]

At this point, is Luka an empty stats guy just like RW?

Luka has proven to be a winner everywhere he's went. At the biggest stage in Europe as the main focal point. 

I mean sheesh look at where the Mavs were before Luka came. That's his effect. He's also just in his 3rd year in the league. He hasn't even had a chance to put up empty stats. 

The narrative of both RW and Harden being empty stat guys come from multiple performances in the playoffs where it mattered most. 

Harden Playoff averages with HOU: 27/5/6 on 42/32/86. That is a marked step down to his regular season averages already. But then we look at his points per game in elimination games and its an even further step down to 23.8ppg. Further Harden has 8 games where he's shot below 20% from the field in the playoffs, tied with Bob Cousey for the most any player ever in the playoffs.  

Westbrook its the same story, he shoots an abysmal 40% from the field and 29% from 3 over his playoff career.

Now compare that with Luka, which by the way its an unfair comparison because the sample is small, but if we want to label him empty stats we might as well at least look.

Luka playoff averages: 31ppg/9.8rpg/8.7apg on 50/36/65.6. Every single stat is higher than his regular season besides his FT's. In the elimination game Luka put up 38/9/9 on 15/26 (54%), 4/9 from 3 (44%) and it still wasn't enough. 

Its far too early to label Luka as an empty stats guy if we even wanted to, but from the small sample size given, you can't even label Luka as empty stats!