The legend of Russell Westbrook
YEARS from now, it won’t matter that the Thunder finished in fifth or sixth or seventh place in the West.
Anyone looking back on this NBA season will want to talk about Russell Westbrook first, and anyone who watched it unfold as it happened will happily oblige them.
What Westbrook is doing now will make even less sense later.
The other night he put up 57 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists, hit a game-tying three to send it into overtime, and won it at the end.
Now its awards season across the NBA, so where does 28-year-old rank in the MVP argument? Westbrook’s is a walking paradox. The triple double implies a wellrounded game by its very terms, but there’s been nothing well-rounded about Westbrook in 2017. He plays almost no defense. He dominates the ball to a historic extent.
His passing is perfunctory—he’ll distribute the ball until he has double-digit assists, and then perfectly-decent role players like Victor Oladipo are transformed into frozen bystanders as the game unfolds.
By design, many of his rebounds come off free throws, and some of them come after uncontested shots as Westbrook abandons his man to chase the boards.
All of this has made it harder to be blown away by his triple doubles.
And yes, he’s an unbelievable scorer who’s been even better in crunch time, but even that story can get complicated.
As he locks into hero mode, teammates eventually become too checked-out to help him at the end, forcing him to do even more.
The real genius of Russ is this: his style in 2017 makes no sense for an individual or a team, but he’s doing it so well, playing so hard, that he’s mostly successful anyway.
Every time one has been ready to officially write him off this season— down 13 in the fourth quarter against the Mavs on Monday, down 21 with seven turnovers against a tanking Magic team on Wednesday—Westbrook will go off and do something that makes criticism impossible.
He creates skeptics, and then silences them.
Against the Mavs, it meant scoring 12 the final 14 points, including a game-winner.
Against the Magic, he scored 19 points in the final eight minutes of the fourth quarter, including the aforementioned game-tying three—a full-speed fast break that turned into a leaning heave from 28-feet, all net. The fourth quarter ended with MVP chants erupting across the entire Orlando crowd. After Westbrook closed it out in overtime, even Magic players were paying respect. Back to the MVP debate. A James Harden voter might note that Houston’s MVP candidate hasn’t had as many heroic moments in crunch time because his team wins most games by double digits. The Rockets beat the Magic by 24 in February and beat the Mavs by 16 at the end of December. They also beat the Thunder on Sunday—Westbrook finished with 39 points next to Harden’s 22, but OKC was down 25 by the time the fourth quarter began. While Westbrook makes his task look impossible and finds a way to succeed, Harden makes the game easier for his entire team, and he’s been more successful than Westbrook. At this point, a Westbrook voter could make two arguments. First, it’s disingenuous to say that Harden alone explains the Rockets success. Houston’s been built with a series of pieces that fit perfectly with where basketball is going, and Mike D’Antoni is the perfect coach to weaponize them. Harden is incredible and arguably the best player in the league to capitalize on this supporting cast and embrace bas- ketball’s new direction, but were he left working with Victor Oladipo and Steven Adams, it’s unlikely he’d be putting up 11 assists per game and pushing 50 wins.
Westbrook’s roster is worse because the second-best player in the NBA decided he didn’t want to play with him anymore.
How much should that count in value discussions?
Likewise, if Westbrook and Harden switched places, OKC is likely still a similarly situated playoff team, while Houston is probably 5-10 wins worse.
The second Westbrook argument is a bit more compelling.
Basically, most smart people can acknowledge that Westbrook’s the antithesis of basketball’s recent evolution.
He’s a video game in real life, and that’s both a compliment and a criticism. As incredible as his numbers are, the OKC offense is as creative as something a 12-year-old gamer would come up with, and it shows when they play teams like Houston and Golden State.
But even then, Russ’s biggest critics can’t deny that this has taken on a life of its own.
Every time the cracks have begun to show and it looks like this season will fall apart in OKC, Westbrook gets even better.
The Thunder dropped four straight games at the beginning of March, but then they came back and beat the Spurs, the Jazz, and blew out the Raptors.
OKC went down double digits in Orlando and Dallas, and then Westbrook brought them back from the dead.
It’s happened so many times this season that it’s not a fluke anymore.
This is the formula, and it’s working better than most anyone could have expected.
It’s captured the imagination of his teammates and opponents alike, not to mention anyone who stumbles upon a random Thunder game at 10:30PM (4:30AM local time) in the middle of the week. Even if 2017 Westbrook is way more Kobe than LeBron, that doesn’t have to be a criticism.
Basketball is more interesting with a few psychopaths around who refuse to compromise. Westbrook is the new Mad King. He’s not the best player in the NBA, He’s not even the best point guard.
As of this week, Westbrook’s season is so outrageous that any award he gets, he deserves.
Whatever flaws he has, it just can’t be overstated how incredible he’s been.