The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Triple-double feature
UConn’s Beverly produces film on Russell Westbrook
In an attempt to figure out his place in the world since becoming a national champion and college graduate at UConn in 2011, Donnell Beverly has taken all sorts of jobs and considered various careers in the Los Angeles area.
He was involved in real estate for a stretch. He sold printers. He dabbled in advertising. He gave marketing a run. He worked at a boutique wealth management firm. He was even, at one point, intent on becoming a big-rig truck driver like his dad, Donnell Beverly Sr.
“I was in the middle of a course, learning, and I was thinking, ‘How the hell did I end up here?’ ” he said Friday. “I was like ‘No, this isn’t for me.’ ”
Beverly, a senior captain on that magical Huskies team that rolled through Manhattan and celebrated under confetti in Houston, has a set of transferable skills that one of his closest friends identified and now leans on to spearhead many pursuits.
Beverly and Russell Westbrook, the enigmatic 13-year NBA veteran and king of the tripledouble, were teammates at Leuzinger High in Lawndale, California, and have been like family since. Beverly has been in Westbrook’s high-profile circle for years, and in late 2017, Westbrook hired him to join Russell Westbrook Enterprises.
Today, Beverly is president of the organization, essentially running point guard for a team that manages Westbrook’s interests in
areas of business, community engagement and social initiative.
Beverly’s role, and his long friendship, put him in the unique position of being able to explain and re-introduce one of the world’s most famous, and most polarizing, basketball players.
“Passion Play: Russell Westbrook,” airs Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on Showtime. Beverly and Westbrook are executive producers for a project three years in the making, a film with Westbrook opening up for deep looks into unexplored areas of a complicated man.
“The goal is to give him a different lens, because most people only know him for how he plays basketball, how he is on the court and how he is with sports media — which, after a game, high-intensity, he may give an angry answer or a funny answer,” Beverly said. “There are tons of viral clips. We wanted to show another side of Russ. We wanted it to be as raw as possible, an authentic film. It’s not, ‘Hey, I’m this perfect guy.’ It’s, ‘I’m imperfect but I’m perfectly me. Love me or hate me, just respect me for being me.’ ”
Westbrook, 32, is sometimes prickly and usually a closed door. He is a man of loud fashion, no-comment moments of silence, even confrontation — and depth, Beverly says, that does not necessarily come across in the global spotlight.
Numerous teammates, family members and coaches were interviewed for the film, which explores Westbrook’s rise in basketball, how those in his world view him, what motivates him and the various ways he’s tried to be a positive force for change in the communities he’s called home.
“I think people don’t really understand who I am,” Westbrook, a married father of three, says in an early scene, over footage showing him interacting with his family before a game. “And a lot of that is because of what I let people see, and what I don’t let them see.”
Westbrook spent two years at UCLA before being selected fourth in the 2008 NBA draft by the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team with which he spent 11 seasons — averaging a triple-double in three of them.
He played for Houston in the COVID-19 bubble season of 2019-20 and last season in Washington, averaging a triple-double for the fourth time. He has more triple-doubles than any player in history (184). He is a ferocious, do-everything guard, a surefire Hall of Famer.
Yet Westbrook has been criticized for his perceived role on teams and his relationships with the media, even teammates. He’s been called one of the best players in basketball history in one breath, a player who brings teams down even while carrying them in another.
“The biggest misconception is that he’s a selfish guy and not for the betterment of the team, that he’s only about himself,” Beverly said. “The film will uncover a lot of things former teammates say about Russ and how he looks at things. Russell’s mindset is that things are always bigger than himself.”
Beverly, 32, met Westbrook during his first day touring Leuzinger, entering ninth grade while Westbrook was entering the 10th. The introduction is one of Beverly’s favorite stories.
“My dad and my uncle, they’re big and buff, we come walking in the gym and my dad’s like, ‘Who wants to play my son for 100 dollars, oneon-one?’ ” Beverly said. “Everybody is pointing at Russell like, ‘Russell, play!’ Russ didn’t want to play because he had some Nike Air Force 1’s on that he just got for school and he didn’t want to mess them up. I always give him [a hard time], saying he was scared to play me that day. Now he has a Jordan Brand shoe deal. But ever since that day, we clicked.”
Beverly arrived at UConn in 2007. He was a role player for four years and incredibly affable, easygoing. From Jim Calhoun to fans to teammates to media, everyone enjoyed “Bev.” In 2011, the Huskies won five games in five days at the Big East Tournament, then six more for the program’s third NCAA title.
“That run is forever established in history,” said Beverly, who remains close friends with Kemba Walker. “It’s almost like the whole world was watching. It was an alignment of the stars once the Big East Tournament started. Just an incredible experience.”
About a month earlier, Westbrook had played in his first of nine NBA All-Star Games. He has made about $250 million in playing contracts alone and will add another $41 million next season as a member of his hometown Lakers. New teammate LeBron James is seeking his fifth championship and polishing his legacy. Westbrook is seeking his first championship and still building his.
“Is he a perfect basketball player?” Beverly said of Westbrook. “No, but who is? Character, that’s what matters most, and Russell has a lot of pride in that.”
Beverly said the film “tells great stories about tragedies, love, faith, how he got to the position he’s in and how he wants to use his platform to influence the people who look up to him and the next generation of athletes, activists and scholars. It’s emotional.”
A tragedy explored is death of Khelcey Barrs, a dear friend to Beverly and Westbrook. Those three, and two others, were playing pickup basketball at a community college close to Leuzinger in 2004. Beverly and Westbrook left first, only to soon learn that Barrs later collapsed and died due to an enlarged heart. Westbrook was devastated. He still wears a “KB3” wristband during NBA games to honor Barrs.
“A lot of his energy lives in Russell today,” Beverly said. “Russell used to be really shy. He wasn’t electric, as he is now. That was always Khelcey, and that’s what Russell has become.”
Westbrook has become a lot of things. Rich. Famous. Celebrated. Controversial. Beverly hopes his friend, through the film, is soon a little easier to understand as a wellintentioned man with faults like anyone.
Beverly, who studied sociology at UConn, previously was an executive producer on another Russell Westbrook Enterprises film, “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre,” which revisits one of the worst cases of racial violence in American history, when armed white mobs killed dozens and burned businesses while terrorizing a wealthy Black section of Tulsa known as “Black Wall Street.” Beverly, inspired by walking the area while in town for a camp Westbrook was running, was first to pitch the project to Westbrook.
The upcoming film is an opportunity for a transparent look at someone who stokes the fire of so many opinions. It is produced by Religion of Sports and Showtime Sports, and co-directed by Emmy winners Gotham Chopra and Erik LeDrew, both of Religion of Sports. Westbrook’s younger brother, Raynard Westbrook, is a co-producer.
“Russ is an athlete [dealing] with a misconception for who he is, and I think this film will give people a lot of insight to how he thinks, why some things have taken place, and certain things he’s never spoken about publicly,” Beverly said. “We’re really proud of it.”