Westbrook’s response is no laughing matter
Oklahoma Thunder star Russell Westbrook’s attitude toward the media has ranged over the years from openly cantankerous to merely cool, but Steve Kerr believes Westbrook’s frequent “next question” approach is “dangerous for the league.”
Westbrook’s disdain for questions, particularly questions from Oklahoma City columnist Berry Tramel, isn’t just harmless or humorous, according to the Golden State Warriors coach. Westbrook’s “next question” responses, often delivered to the Oklahoman’s Tramel, have generated laughs. But Kerr warned on Sunday that the deflection creates a distance between athlete and fan, and that the National Basketball Association’s strong suit is a connection to players that, for instance, the National Football League does not have. Westbrook’s “next question” response has spread, but treating it as a joke is missing the point, as far as Kerr is concerned.
“I think it’s dangerous for the league,” he said, according to Ethan Strauss of The Athletic. “I just feel that we have to be very careful as a league. We’re in a good place right now. Very popular. Fans love the game, the social dynamic, the fashion. But more than anything they love the connection they feel to the players. I think it’s important for the players to understand that it’s a key dynamic to this league. I don’t think this is a healthy dynamic, for this league, for any player, any team, any local media, any national media.”
Westbrook’s teammate
Paul George borrowed the “next question” gimmick after the Thunder’s loss to Portland in Game 3 of their playoff series Friday night.
Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers has noticed, too, cracking in response to a question, “I could say ‘next question,’ but I’m not going to do that,” after a reporter’s recent query.
NBA rules require that practices be open to reporters, that locker-rooms are open before games and that players be available after a game. NBA athletes are often far more accessible to the media than those in the NFL.
Kerr noted that dealing with the media is “part of the business. You’ve got to feed information to the fans. You don’t have to give a great answer, but it’s dangerous when you go down that path of no communication because one of the reasons people like the league right now is we have a lot of great players, really good guys who handle themselves well. So don’t kill that. You’ve got to keep that going. That’s a big part of the business.”
Tramel and Westbrook have a history, one that perhaps is exacerbated by the easy familiarity that can develop between reporters and athletes in small media markets. In a recent Oklahoman column, Tramel promised to continue asking questions “with no hope of getting an answer, because the media shouldn’t give in to Westbrook’s desire to control everything.
“That’s the seed of Westbrook’s frustration with me in particular and the media in general. Control. He is frustrated that the media is out of his control,” Tramel wrote. “That was manifested during the 2017 playoffs, when he intercepted my question to Steven Adams about why the Thunder collapsed so much during the minutes when Westbrook sat. Westbrook wouldn’t allow Adams to answer; he tried to commandeer the press conference and basically succeeded, despite my repeated attempts to point out that I wasn’t asking Westbrook, I was asking Adams.”
Obviously, reporters would prefer that their relationships with the people they cover be a little less adversarial, and Tramel said he’s no different.
“When Westbrook famously said he didn’t like me three years ago, I didn’t take offense,” he wrote. “He has no idea if he likes me. He doesn’t know me. This is just Westbrook marking his territory. And me marking mine.
“The idea that Westbrook has some personal issue with me is misguided. That’s not true. Westbrook’s issue is with media in general. I don’t know from where his original distrust came, but I know he’s allowed it to fester over the years, with no guidance from Thunder officials. It’s too late — far too late — to do anything about it now. But Westbrook has been disrespectful to the Oklahoma City media going back almost a decade. And the OKC media has not been disrespectful back.”