Talk of the Threads: Russ’ last chance

Ever since the Denver Nuggets fired their former head coach, Michael Malone, they’ve faced intense coverage alleging chemistry issues, which has also been the standard for troubled Russell Westbrook teams these last few years. The 17-year veteran has often ended up as the scapegoat in his many stops around the league.

On April 10, The Athletic reported that Malone’s faith in Westbrook and his large role in the rotation in part led to Malone’s dismissal, leading fans and the media to rush back to the always-intense microscope trained on Westbrook, right as the playoffs have begun. Many fans blamed Westbrook for the Nuggets’ sloppy end to the regular season, pointing to blunders such as his costly turnover in an April 1 game as examples.

Westbrook has played well in the Nuggets’ first two playoff games since, but it hasn’t been enough to lead his team to the desired results, as Denver sits tied 1-1 with the Los Angeles Clippers after losing Game 2 to Kawhi Leonard’s explosion on Monday. If the rest of the series doesn’t go well for Denver—a team that was considered a contender at the beginning of the season—it’ll be yet another red mark on Westbrook’s resume.

Given how belligerently negative the discourse around Westbrook has been for most of his career, I constantly forget the depth and quality of Westbrook’s resume. He’s an MVP, the NBA’s all-time leader in triple-doubles, a two-time All-Star Game MVP, in the top 20 of the league’s all-time top scorers, a nine-time all-star, a nine-time All-NBA selection and probably the most athletic point guard in league history.

Yet, time and time again, we’ve heard conversations about Westbrook like the ones happening again in Denver—that his mistakes are costing his team a chance at success.

The primary issue many of Westbrook’s critics take, myself included, is that his gaudy statistical accomplishments have rarely translated into team success, leading many to question his true impact on the game and his legacy overall.

Westbrook’s trademark characteristics, his aggression and uninhibited approach to basketball, have served as the main catalysts for much of that criticism. He’ll stuff the stat sheet and make flashy plays, but it’ll come at the expense of efficiency and offensive stability.

Repeatedly, we’ve seen his style of play—“letting Russ be Russ”—translate to costly turnovers and untimely bad shots in critical moments. As the playoff failures have piled up for Westbrook, so has the case against his legacy.

The “empty stats” argument isn’t just one that’s been applied to Westbrook, as other stars such as James Harden, Jalen Green and Joel Embiid have faced similar criticism. However, no other player has faced such scrutiny on this subject that their entire careers have seemingly been re-evaluated. Things have gotten so bad with Westbrook to the point where people seem to question whether or not he’s ever contributed anything to a winning basketball team.

At first glance, this may seem harsh, but much of this re-evaluation isn’t without justification.

Westbrook saw his greatest team success relatively early in his career, when he played with Kevin Durant on the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he and Durant made four Western Conference Finals and notched an NBA Finals appearance in 2012. Had it not been for the Thunder infamously blowing a 3-1 series lead in 2016, it’s quite likely that the duo would have added another Finals appearance, and quite possibly a title, to that resume.

However, since Durant’s infamous departure from Oklahoma City, Westbrook’s career has been defined by electrifying, statistically dominant regular seasons and repeatedly disappointing postseason runs.

Westbrook has career playoff averages of 23.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7 assists, however, he puts up these numbers while shooting 40% from the field, 30% from 3-point range and while committing 3.9 turnovers a game—all drop-offs from his already unflattering regular season career averages in those areas.

These averages drop even further when you look at only his post-Durant career. Since 2017, Westbrook is shooting just 38% from the field and 30% from distance in playoff play.

Of course, Westbrook has played for many teams in the intervening years since Durant left Oklahoma City in 2016. He has played on six different franchises, only making it to the second round once, in the bubble year in 2020, when he played with James Harden in Houston and lost to LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.

A number of teams Westbrook has joined have also actively gotten worse since he joined. When the Lakers traded for him in 2021, they did so expecting to contend for a title as they did in 2020. Instead, they missed the entire postseason, not even qualifying for a top-10 seed in the Western Conference.

The former UCLA star’s blunders have been piling up over roughly the past eight years, to the point where he has become more of a villain in some circles than respected as the future Hall of Famer he is on paper. Lakers fans have gone as far as making entire compilations of all the disastrously bad plays during his time there.

Westbrook has been a player who can make bad teams decent through his pure will and volume of activity on the court, but rarely has he made good teams great. In fact, it’s likely that many Durant fans, Lakers fans, Rockets fans and now Nuggets fans will make the argument that he actively does the opposite, that he hurts teams at the highest level, something that can’t be said about nearly any other superstar of the past 20 years.

For a player who once had all-time great potential, Westbrook’s career legacy has taken a massive hit.

It may not necessarily be fair, but this playoff series feels as if it’s the last opportunity for Westbrook to salvage his legacy so that he’s not forever remembered as someone who is a detriment to team success.

He’s off to a good start so far, making key plays in both of the Nuggets’ playoff games, including his forcing a game-winning steal in Game 1, however, the former MVP is on a tight leash. If he slips up again in a big moment, it might mark the end of his career, and the verdict on his legacy will be set in stone as the superstar who never could win at the highest level.