Another Russell Westbrook tribute

On Jujutsu Kaisen, the "Russel Westbrook Fan Club" [sic], and more

The popular anime/manga Jujutsu Kaisen features a world plagued by Curses, monsters born from humanity’s negative feelings. Only a few gifted Sorcerers can battle these beasts, hurling magic their way in an effort to save humankind. The most potent mystical weapon in the good guys’ arsenal is Domain Expansion, in which a Sorcerer pulls his prey into a pocket dimension powered by the Sorcerer’s own cursed energy.

I can’t think of a better way to describe what Russell Westbrook did to opponents than using his cursed energy to drag foes into a hellscape of his devising.

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If you did a giant word cloud comprised of all the things written about Westbrook, “polarizing” would tower over everything else. But it wasn’t always this way. Young Westbrook, Thunder Westbrook, was a force of nature as powerful as his team’s namesake (and just as mercurial). I am saddened for Gen Z and Alpha readers who never experienced what that was like, who know him only through his increasingly frequent appearances in social media troll blooper reels.

For most players, we say the highlights aren’t everything. But for prime Westbrook, highlights were the only thing:

Honestly, that compilation from the NBA focuses more on buzzer-beaters than it should. It misses Brodie’s spirit. Westbrook obviously wanted to win, but winning the play mattered more than winning the game, if that makes sense. There was no forest, only an endless succession of trees.

Case in point: No one hated the rim more than Russell Westbrook. He dunked it less than you remember, but that’s only because every dunk attempt was so memorable:

Where normal players wanted to fly, Westbrook wanted to launch himself into outer f***ing space. While that vision was occasionally misguided, I loved the audacity, the ambition. He lived his basketball life a quarter-mile at a time.

Westbrook’s broken jump shot became a sad trademark, and he was never comfortable shooting the above-the-break threes that many of his star peers thrived on. But early Westbrook had a devastating pull-up elbow jumper, something he called his “cotton shot,” that perfectly complemented his ceaseless drives to the rim. That weapon abandoned him around the same time as his free throw, which fell from consistently above 80% to ~65% by the turn of the 2020s.

Late-career Westbrook also lost some of his famous energy on defense, becoming more prone to erratic steal-hunting¹ and ball-watching (excluding a revival on that end for the Clippers and Nuggets). But early Westbrook was far more focused, treating the gambles as a surgical knife rather than a defensive life raft. Predictably, he was particularly menacing as a one-on-one defender, savoring the physical element of strength vs. strength.

Westbrook broke the triple-double, turning a once-noteworthy event into his personal calling card (Neil Paine covered this ground pretty well right before I hit publish). Something magical became something mundane. Only one player, Oscar Robertson, had averaged a triple-double in the recorded history of the NBA before Westbrook did it four times. The first three were with OKC but, even back then, were often dismissed as stat-chasing at its finest. “Steven Adams is letting him get all the rebounds,” haters would say without watching a single Thunder game. Sure, that’s why he averaged 11.5 boards for the Washington Wizards with Alex Len as his starting center two seasons later!

I don’t mean to imply there wasn’t any box-score-hunting going on. Westbrook treated the stat sheet as one more opponent to dominate. But trust me, if other players were physically capable of doing the same things, they absolutely would. Nobody else in the league could even try.

Can we talk about Westbrook’s passing? Of course we can; it’s my blog. It’s wild to me how many people dismiss Westbrook as a passer, a straightforward blend of athleticism and instinct. That’s damning by a lack of other descriptors.

Make no mistake: Westbrook was an intelligent, creative, and joyous passer, a playmaker in the rawest sense. Contrasting his personal style with another flawed, incredible contemporary, Chris Paul, is an exercise in artistic juxtaposition. Paul’s game was math and physics and Brutalist architecture — beautiful in its own way, to be sure, but form following strictly from function.² Westbrook was wilder, more prone to misjudgment, but also an elite craftsman who built soaring Gothic cathedrals. Why choose between form and function at all when they could be so wonderfully intertwined?

I pulled a GIF of a 40-foot lefty bounce pass splitting two defenders from an article I wrote 18 months ago. This wouldn’t make his career highlight list:

And speaking of form: Westbrook was at the forefront of the 2010s NBA-player-as-style-icon movement that continues today. ESPN once built its own microsite documenting every one of his pregame looks for the 2017-18 season. “He has a nice smile,” said Mrs. Poetry, who — true story! — both doesn’t care about basketball and once belonged to a Facebook group called the “Russel Westbrook Fan Club” [sic]. (I’m sure his chiseled 6’4” frame is nice, too.)³

In locker rooms and on the court, Westbrook’s snarling public persona was meticulously crafted, a way to keep the press and fans away from his closely guarded private life. Most teammates and support staff loved him, sketching a quiet, generous, hardworking, routine-driven gentleman. However, he was stubborn, and he was demanding. He frequently butted heads with superstar teammates and peers for a variety of reasons that were typically driven as much by personalities clashing as any on-court issues.

Many of the recollections I’ve read about Westbrook claim he never changed. Untrue! But perhaps the changes were too quiet for such a loud player. For example, the season after winning MVP, he took a step back to allow newcomer Paul George room to spread his wings — and in his second OKC season, George averaged five more points per game than Westbrook and came in third in MVP voting himself.

Westbrook similarly enabled teammates as varied as Kevin Durant (4x scoring leader next to Russ), Bradley Beal (career-high in points per game), and James Harden (league-leading points per game) to find or maintain the best versions of themselves. It’s hard to be the 1B when you’ve proven you can be a 1A; just ask Jaylen Brown (and he never won an MVP). Westbrook was consistently willing.

The changes were subtle, sure. But how much could a player like Westbrook change? There wasn’t, like, an off-ball shooting switch he could toggle. You would never want him to slow it down and become a Paul-style tactician, particularly not when he shared the ball and the court with so many illustrious teammates. I’m not sure what people really expected.

On a personal level, Westbrook hanging ‘em up is bittersweet. Westbrook is just five months older than me. His professional career has tracked alongside mine⁴, and his retirement is yet another reminder that my own prime is closer to the end than the beginning (if it hasn’t derailed already).

But by the end of his career, Westbrook had become something of a caricature, a living meme. He was a punching bag for stat sheet wizards and casual fans yelling “Westbrick!” alike. I’m a little glad he won’t be subjected to that any longer.

Russell Westbrook was a singular NBA player. I’m not sure how future basketball fans will treat him. Will his box-score exploits go down as Wilt-like perversions, unfairly painting him as someone who preferred breaking records to chasing wins? Or will his outrageous moment-to-moment efforts and indelible highlights sweeten his legacy down the road?

Only time will tell. I know how I’ll feel.

1. I’ve often described it as the “make mean faces and run in random directions” defense.

2. I’m not an architect, clearly, so please don’t @ me about my engineering ignorance.

3. Certainly she’s never told me I have a nice smile. I’m quite sure I do!

4. Although I certainly don’t mean to compare scope or scale!