There is a man in Oklahoma City who undoubtedly believes himself to be the best basketball player on planet earth.
While he is certainly wrong, he is great enough that his maniacal attempts to prove his superiority may actually make him the most entertaining basketball player on the face of the planet earth to watch (though clearly that is a more subjective honor).
That man, of course, is Russell Westbrook — Thunder point guard, five-time and soon-to-be-six-time All-Star, two-time defending All Star MVP, 2016 All-NBA First Team, 2015 NBA Scoring Champion and 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist. I list his credentials simply to make the point that he really is tremendous. Elite. Once-in-a-generation if not one-of-a-kind all-time.
But Russ has a fatal flaw; he’s so convinced of his own greatness, so utterly positive of his infallibility, that he cannot see the championship forest through the trees of his own accomplishments. Put another way, Westbrook’s self-confidence — while not misplaced, exactly — has resulted in him playing and talking himself into corner after corner… so much so, one might say that what he perceives as a march down championship lane towards a coronation is actually just a square-shaped stroll around a well-appointed room previously visited by the Allen Iversons and Patrick Ewings of the world.
Examples of Westbrook’s apparent nose for the space between a rock and a hard place abound: let’s go back to the offseason, in the aftermath of Kevin Durant’s defection to Golden State, when an understandably hurt Russie took every opportunity to take “covert” shots at his former teammate and alleged best friend.
SBNation does a nice job of compiling some greatest hits of Westbrook’s “I don’t care about Kevin Durant at all, I assure you these apparent shots are just coincidences” period of time. He kept telling everyone who would listen that he didn’t care a lick about his former teammate or his departure from OKC, and we kept telling him back (though he wouldn’t listen), “We don’t believe you.”
From his cupcake Instagram photo to calling Durant “cute” to the absurdity of his orange photographer’s vest, there has never been a moment where ANYONE believed anything other than: Russell Westbrook is furious with Kevin Durant and wants to annihilate him at every turn and in every possible way.
But he can’t. He can’t because he’s not as good of a basketball player, for one thing. He also can’t because he and Kevin Durant aren’t competing for the same things, really.
Kevin Durant is playing for wins and for fun. It’s a simple formula, really, and one that I think became rather obvious with his free agency decision. He chose a place where they’re having more fun than anyone else, where everyone has agreed to subjugate their personal standing in support of the team and the team’s ability to win.
Russell Westbrook is playing for his own personal greatness and to prove his doubters wrong…and then also to win.
Don’t get me wrong, he absolutely wants to win, there is no doubt in my mind of that. In fact, I believe that Russ believes that winning is his number one priority. Unfortunately for him and probably for Thunder fans, he’s dead wrong; because he has consistently proven that he is only willing to play HIS way, and that his unmatched will to succeed is not quite the same as an unmatched desire for his team’s victory.
Put another way: you can SAY you’re about championships, you can TALK about how winning is the number one priority, but when we watch and our eyes tell us differently, we can say, “We don’t believe you.”
Put another, another way: Kevin Durant just wants to win; Russell Westbrook wants to win on his terms. Which brings us to Russ’s reaction to the flagrant foul he received at the hands of Zaza Pachulia on Wednesday night.
I am not going to call the play a flop, actually. If I’m seeing the replay correctly, it appears to me that Zaza did actually hit Westbrook in the face after running into him, and though I don’t love the rolling-on-the-floor part of Russ’s reaction, I do think he actually got hit pretty hard. Once he hopped up, we got none of the chin-rubbing histrionics we saw from LeBron on Monday so I’m ok with it.
The problem is the payback, and I’m not even talking about his asinine postgame comments (yet – we will get to those). I’m talking about the third quarter of the basketball game, when a clearly-still-perturbed Russell Westbrook went all Russell Westbrook on everybody to the tune of a seven-point, seven-rebound, four-assist quarter. A tremendous quarter, statistically, and the quarter where his team effectively lost the game thanks in large part to him shooting just 3-for-8 (0-for-3 from three-point range) and turning the ball over three times.
Overall in the game, Russ assembled the sort of insane triple-double that has characterized his season: 27pts, 15reb and 13ast, not to mention two each of steals and blocks. But I maintain that the more telling fact is that it was actually a quadruple-double when you include his 10 turnovers, and probably equally noteworthy is the fact that he shot just 8-for-23 from the field.
It’s not entirely fair to contrast that with the 13-for-16, 40pt monster that KD threw down against his former team, simply given the talent each is surrounded by. But it certainly tells the story of two guys who play the game in very different ways, a story that KD also sort of outlined before the game.
Without diving too deeply into exactly what Russ could do differently (I would argue that a major problem is actually his wild increase in 2-pt shot attempts combined with a 4.5% decrease in shooting percentage at that range but that’s for another time) my point is simply that while I don’t think anyone would argue that he’s not trying HARD enough, there is ample evidence that he could replace some of his try-hard with some try-smart and probably improve his team. Evidence, one might say, that regardless of what he thinks or says, he’s not PLAYING as though winning is truly his top priority.
Which brings us to his All-Star “snub” and his subsequent comments. First off, it should be said that using the word snub in this context is verging on silliness: factually speaking, there were three excellent players (Harden, Curry and Westbrook) for two All-Star starter spots, and something had to give. I think Harden’s stats combined with his team’s wins make him the clear choice for one spot, but ultimately Curry or Westbrook had to be a reserve and it could have been either. Whatever.
More interesting is what Russ had to say.
Specifically around 10 seconds, where he says three things that I think could fairly be called two truths and a lie (though I stress again that I don’t believe Westbrook believes he is lying):
1. “I just play.” This seems undeniably true. Certainly Westbrook has improved since coming into the NBA, he is a tireless worker and competitor, but he also doesn’t seem to have much time for coaching or gameplan or running sets or focusing on ball movement or… well, you get the point. He just plays.
2. “I don’t play for All-Star bids, I play to win Championships.” Well, that’s not true. It’s hard for me to believe that the two-time reigning All-Star Game MVP doesn’t care a lick about the All-Star game, first of all. Second of all, it’s obvious that this team is not playing for a championship, and I think it’s certainly a reasonable interpretation to suggest that Westbrook’s refusal to compromise has contributed to the franchise reaching the state it is currently in.
3. “Every night I compete at a high level.” Damn straight. No argument here.
The difficulty of this is that Westbrook is really an engaging and electric character who can be pretty lovable at times — many of us sports nuts appreciate an on-court psychopath with a flair for dramatics, as my colleague Brian Murphy pointed out yesterday. I’m not sure anyone other than Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant has competed with the pure and insane devotion and determination we see from Westbrook on a play-to-play basis.
But the point remains the same: Russell Westbrook can say he doesn’t care about the all-star vote, and there is every reason to think that he believes what he says, yet we can observe the evidence and turn to him and say, “We don’t believe you.”
Now let’s turn back to the Zaza foul, recounted here by our talented KNBR.com staff.
Westbrook on Pachulia:
"I don't play that. Ima get his ass back." pic.twitter.com/fb4b6Aj4j7
— KNBR (@KNBR) January 19, 2017
A hard foul, a flagrant call, a tie game at half. Russ’s anger expresses itself in a poor-shooting, turnover-laden third quarter that effectively loses the game for the Thunder. Meanwhile his nemesis Kevin Durant is skipping through the flowers en route to the most efficient 40-point game ever, arguably.
The anger burns. The frustration boils. The rage bubbles over, and even a postgame shower and a cozy yellow sweatshirt can’t calm him down, so we get what has become a well-worn soundbite over the past two days: “Ima get his ass back. Straight up… I don’t play that game. Ima get his ass back.”
It’s a delightful soundbite, one that we’ll almost definitely hear again and again in the run up to the Warriors’ Feb 11 date in Oklahoma City. It’s also utter nonsense, as everyone besides Russell himself is probably aware of.
He will not get Zaza Pachulia back. There is no such thing as getting Zaza Pachulia back. His comments are already under review by the league — as he should have known they would be — which means that if he does anything physical in the vein of a reprisal, he will CERTAINLY be punished by the NBA, which would only hurt himself and his team. Moreover, as crazy and physically gifted as Russ is, he is very much overmatched in any sort of confrontation with a 6’11” Eastern European.
That even-keeled and surprisingly eloquent Euro had the perfect response to Westbrook’s “threat” when reporters brought it to his attention:
“We’re thinking about this team and staying healthy moving forward and, better, getting into the playoffs and playing for the championship. That’s what I’m thinking about… I’m not thinking about these kind of comments. That team is not there, so they might be thinking about other stuff, like getting back. So, you know, OK, you can get me back. But this is my 14th year. We all know what my game is, to play hard. Not dirty, but play hard. If it was a hard foul, it was a foul. It wasn’t dirty at all, so I’m not worried about this.”
Zaza is right not to worry about Westbrook “getting him back.” In all likelihood absolutely nothing will come of this. Why? Because of the point I’ve made all along, the thing I keep repeating. Russel has a lot to say, and I have no doubt he’ll continue to talk in the same tone and with the same disdain for every obstacle in his path, but ultimately all we need to respond is the words of the one and only Hova: