Oklahoma City Thunder’s rebuild will take some time
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) >> Yosef Maaroof wanted one more Russell Westbrook memory in Oklahoma City.
When he learned Thursday night the Thunder were planning to send Westbrook to the Houston Rockets for Chris Paul and draft picks, the 20-year-old Tulsa resident planned to make the twohour drive to Oklahoma City with friends. They wanted to take videos and photos in front of the large images of Thunder players that adorn Chesapeake Energy Arena during the season, hoping Westbrook’s photo would still be up on Friday morning.
It wasn’t, so Maaroof came up with a different tribute. In a video he posted on Twitter, he put on the Westbrook jerseys he’s collected since 2012 , took them off one by one and laid them side by side in front of the arena. He wore 18 in the video, which has been
viewed more than 85,000 times.
Maaroof said Westbrook has always been his favorite player. And the next addition to his collection will be a Rockets jersey.
“He was never perfect, but just the emotion he showed — he was very relatable, I feel like,” Maaroof said. “He was the underdog. People have always just not appreciated him the way they should have.”
With their emotional sparkplug gone, the Thunder, as we knew them, are no more. Westbrook was the last remaining player from the team that moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2008.
Kevin Durant, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Paul George and others, all gone. Now Westbrook.
He spent his entire 11-year career with the Thunder, despite earlier chances to leave. With Westbrook, the Thunder won at least 45 games for 10 straight years and reached the Western Conference Finals four times, including a run to the NBA Finals in 2012.
“It’s a lot of heartbreak,” Maaroof said as he recalled recent conversations with his friends. “Not to be dramatic, but it really feels like someone died. We’re all 20 years old, so we all grew up with Russ, grew up with this team, pretty much through middle school, high school, college now.”
Sure, Westbrook was a league MVP, two-time scoring champion and twotime All-Star MVP. Yes, he was a freakish athlete and triple-double threat every night. And against the odds, he evolved from perceived ball hog to two-time assist leader.
But it goes beyond that for Thunder fans. Westbrook is from the Los Angeles area, and with it came the flash and style one might expect. But he adopted Oklahoma and supported the community with his reading rooms, basketball camps, comedy shows and his yearly Thanksgiving meal at the Boys and Girls Club in Oklahoma City. The night everyone learned Westbrook was being dealt, he was at a comedy club in Tulsa for a benefit show.
“He’s like the staple of the franchise,” Tulsa comic Hynni B said. “He makes you want to stand up, he makes you want to have heart. You know where he came from, you know what he’s doing for the community. It’s hurtful to see him to leave.”