including the town\u2019s famed Black Wall Street.<\/a><\/p>\nIn 2016-17, when he became the second person to average a triple-double for a full NBA season, last done by Oscar Robertson 55 years prior, Westbrook gave not a single extended interview to anyone. Never cared to share what it meant to him to reach a plateau only one other player in league history ever reached. What it meant about him, and who he was, and the work he\u2019d put in to reach that mark. He was loud in his refusal to speak, if that makes any sense.<\/p>\n
Because his words mattered only to those for whom he cared the most.<\/p>\n
His actions would have to do for the rest of us. Beating everyone (well, not Durant; we\u2019ll call it a tie) to practice most days to get up shots and run the dreaded \u201c17s\u201d wearing weight vests. He had maniacal attention to film detail, telling young teammates they couldn\u2019t just watch their own man on tape; they had to know what everyone else on the floor was doing, too. Taking young prospect Rui Hachimura under his wing in Washington during the COVID season of 2020-21, and teaching him what competing every night really meant, as Westbrook willed the Wizards to an improbable playoff spot.<\/p>\n
He will make the Naismith Hall of Fame, and this will make so many people so very angry \u2014 people who took seeming delight in deconstructing Westbrook\u2019s game and his impact on winning. No one\u2019s career was more \u201cwell, actuallied\u201d than Westbrook\u2019s. His triple-double records, 2017 MVP award, two scoring titles, three assist crowns and nine All-Star appearances all fed into the wood chipper of scorn of a large segment of NBA fans and analysts, who found them all wanting, numbers created out of whole cloth, self-aggrandizement.<\/p>\n
Which is when I, again, retort.<\/p>\n
Westbrook has an NBA-record 209 triple-doubles. In those 209 such games, his teams had a cumulative record of 153-56. That\u2019s a win percentage of .732. It is hard to square the circle of \u201cWestbrook is a selfish stat hunter\u201d with \u201c.732.\u201d When he got a triple-double, his team won 73.2 percent of the time. If you\u2019re telling me an NBA team wouldn\u2019t want a .732 win percentage in a season \u2026 well, I\u2019d like to introduce you to the 2025-26 Detroit Pistons, whose 60-22 record produced, exactly, a win percentage of \u2026 .732.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Westbrook needed allies. If not for Troy Weaver, the longtime NBA executive, and the Thunder\u2019s assistant general manager in 2008, arguing passionately Westbrook could play the point despite never doing so in college \u2014 and that the young Thunder should use a precious top-five pick on him, a guy almost no one had as a top-five prospect entering the fall of 2007, Westbrook\u2019s second and final season at UCLA \u2014 Westbrook may have never been fully seen. Or, at least, it may have taken him much longer, or perhaps being on another team.<\/p>\n
So, too, did he have the good fortune of playing for a coach in Scott Brooks who let him loose, even as OKC put up loss after loss in Westbrook\u2019s rookie season, which started out with a 3-29 record. As he and Durant grew as players, there were associated growing pains, on and off the court. But they played eight seasons together before Durant left for Golden State. Afterward, Westbrook stayed, matched Robertson\u2019s achievement, and saw a retooling of the team through, with various co-stars such as Paul George and Carmelo Anthony.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s gratifying,\u201d Brooks said in 2017, during Westbrook\u2019s MVP season. \u201cRussell was, they were saying things that were, to me, unfair. And they were killing me for being the world\u2019s dumbest coach playing him at point guard \u2014 he can\u2019t make point-guard decisions \u2026 he averaged 15, 5 and 5 as a rookie! Five rebounds. And there were only like four other players who\u2019d ever done that at the time. But people forget about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Westbrook made but a single Finals appearance, in 2012. But that can\u2019t be the sum of what his nearly two decades in the Association were about. He created himself, flaws and all, and made himself into an all-time great. And if it was that easy to re-create what he brought to the court, we\u2019d have seen a half-dozen other guys impact the game the way he did. You can speak up in dissent, of course, but Westbrook\u2019s already left the building, having said all he wants to say.<\/p>\n