He absolutely wasn't. Harden and Kawhi were both better. Kawhi was the best player on a 61 win team while being DPOY. Harden was the best player on a 55 win team and totally revamped his game to be a PG/SG hybrid.

So why should Russ be rewarded for finishing at expectations? Where is this narrative that his roster was "trash" coming from? The majority of pre-season rankings have OKC making the playoffs, at the record they finished with. Why is Russ being rewarded for literally meeting expectations?

He didn't lead Russ in clutch performance. Where are the stats to back that up? The team was worse with Russ on bench because the entire year it was just the "Russ triple double show". When you go a whole year without any other player capable of initiating an offense and just standing around waiting for Russ to pass you the ball, of course you're going to be bad without him. All of these problems were created because the team was catering to Russ's triple double nonsense.