What's the point of saying a players PER 36 is on par with Kyrie, CP3, Magic, and Goku right now when they clearly aren't playing those minutes or have anywhere close to the physical attributes of the aforementioned? We're all just shooting the ****, the elitism and my way is the highway is annoying on both sides.
I'd like to see your annoyed tone with the opposite side of the argument though.
Is that Russell's fault that he's not playing 36 minutes a game? Nobody on the team is getting more than 29. Byron only played Clarkson over 30 last season.
Had Russell been playing 30 out the gate, like he should have been, and like he should be now.. then it would be no problem. That also goes with Randle & Ingram as well. No real reason they shouldn't be playing 30.
But we've had this discussion before... PER 36 is a pretty reliable when you use it in comparison of guys who are playing 25+ minutes. Not like we're comparing an 8 minute bench guy to a 36 minute guy. It's a way to try to hold things constant. Because unless they played the same exact minutes, a comparison is even more filled with statistical sample error
EVEN THEN.
If you just compared their PER GAME (which would have the caveat of Russell is at a disadvantage because he's playing 10 less minutes a game than some of them, therefore wouldn't be able to accumulate a couple extra points, assists, and an extra rebound... He's within ear shot of all of them (CP3, Wall, Westbrook, Lillard, Steph)
(To take a twist a bit, to get the stats you want Russell to have, that not a single one of them had in their second year, there has never been a guy to average 19/4/7 in less than 30 minutes.. It's legitimately never happened. So you shouldn't expect Russell to do it either.... Hell 19/4/7 is averaged by like 5 guys maximum a season)
But with lacking all of those physical attributes of those aforementioned, he's within the range of them. With all his lack of speed, lazy, Hollywood, whatever new thing we say, he's not a million miles away, he's a lack of an extra handful of minutes away