Russell Westbrook discussed his decision to retire from the NBA ahead of the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
“I just felt for me, it was a timing thing,” Westbrook said in an interview with Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan (0:27 mark). “I’ve played 18 full seasons and I gave the game everything I had. Every night I competed at the highest level. Every time I stepped on that floor, I played like it was my last. I don’t think you can do much more for the game by doing that.”<\/p>\n
The veteran point guard confirmed<\/a> that he would be stepping away from the sport on Aug. 12.<\/p>\n He also explained what he wants his legacy to be as he begins life after basketball.<\/p>\n “I think legacy is something that in the sports world, as you know, it’s based around championships and trophies,” Westbrook told Strahan (3:34 mark). “I just think opposite of that. I think legacy is based around what you’re able to do with the platform, the things you’ve been given and how you helped to impact and inspire other people.”<\/p>\n Westbrook put together a stellar NBA career in which he racked up nine All-Star nods, nine All-NBA selections, two scoring titles and one MVP award. He averaged a triple-double in four separate seasons.<\/p>\n The 37-year-old owns career averages of 20.9 points, 8.0 assists, 6.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game. <\/p>\n Westbrook sits at No. 14 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list<\/a> and No. 5 on the league’s all-time assists leaderboard<\/a>. His 209 triple-doubles are also the most in the history of the association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russell Westbrook discussed his decision to retire from the NBA ahead of the 2026-27 season. “I just felt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-937428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}