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Russell Westbrick Discussion: Clipper Gonna Clip

Discussion in 'NBA Discussion' started by LaVarBallsDad, Jul 29, 2021.

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Savory Griddles Moderator Staff Member

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Cookie said: ↑

I’m trademarking the word clank, so at least I will be able to make money during the game chats.
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This summer he is finally going to master his mid range pull up while running FULL FREAKING SPEED.

Savory Griddles, Jul 29, 2021

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Savory Griddles said: ↑

Does anyone know if Westbrook's body fat is low enough?
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It’s lower than mine. That good enough?

(Eating peanut M&Ms as I write this, btw.)

IE Lakers, Jul 29, 2021

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Cookie said: ↑

I’m trademarking the word clank, so at least I will be able to make money during the game chats.
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Wow, Cookie.

IE Lakers, Jul 29, 2021

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IE Lakers said: ↑

It’s lower than mine. That good enough?

(Eating peanut M&Ms as I write this, btw.)
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So you must be on the Dudley diet.

Cookie, Jul 29, 2021

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Cookie said: ↑

I’m trademarking the word clank, so at least I will be able to make money during the game chats.
Click to expand...

LaVarBallsDad, Jul 29, 2021

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Russ is one of those players you hate when he’s on the other team, jawing with Rondo’s brother in the bubble crowd, inventing ways to get himself hyped. But when he’s on your team, you love him, because he plays all out at all times, he will go down swinging. UCLA is my college team, so I saw his whole college career, I never saw him becoming the player he did back then, he was really good yes, but he was raw. That he worked himself into a triple double machine is pretty amazing. No, he isn’t a shooter, but he will finally allow us to have a player who can create a shot other than LeBron, which we need badly, and which LeBron clearly wants as you know this move was done with him recruiting behind the scenes. I’ve loved to hate Russ as he played all out against us for years now, and now I look forward to loving him in LA again.

Weezy, Jul 29, 2021

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Cookie said: ↑

So you must be on the Dudley diet.
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Except for the exercising part, yes. Yes I am.

IE Lakers, Jul 29, 2021

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Oh and I like Rob’s aggressiveness here, even if it doesn’t work out in the end. You have LeBron, you go for titles NOW, you don’t waste his last years like Kobe’s were wasted. Clearly what we had last season wasn’t cutting it, and the Nets and other teams improved, so he went out and got us that 3rd star, it’s a legit superteam if filled out right around them.

Weezy, Jul 29, 2021

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Weezy said: ↑

Oh and I like Rob’s aggressiveness here, even if it doesn’t work out in the end. You have LeBron, you go for titles NOW, you don’t waste his last years like Kobe’s were wasted. Clearly what we had last season wasn’t cutting it, and the Nets and other teams improved, so he went out and got us that 3rd star, it’s a legit superteam if filled out right around them.
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I think the aggressiveness by Rob is a sign of Jeannie's aggressivness as well. She is not a rich owner. The bill on this team is going to be MASSIVE (unless they plan on letting THT and Caruso walk which they can't at this point after jettisoning all our depth).

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Weezy said: ↑

Oh and I like Rob’s aggressiveness here, even if it doesn’t work out in the end. You have LeBron, you go for titles NOW, you don’t waste his last years like Kobe’s were wasted. Clearly what we had last season wasn’t cutting it, and the Nets and other teams improved, so he went out and got us that 3rd star, it’s a legit superteam if filled out right around them.
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i'll never give up the idea that we were plenty good enough to win last year. but i also get wanting to go all in. and a two-year gamble isn't the worst.

i think they saw bkn as the only true threat this year and figured they needed one more star. can we get another guy as good as harris as our 4th (i think hield qualifies there)?

abeer3, Jul 29, 2021

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abeer3 said: ↑

i'll never give up the idea that we were plenty good enough to win last year. but i also get wanting to go all in. and a two-year gamble isn't the worst.

i think they saw bkn as the only true threat this year and figured they needed one more star. can we get another guy as good as harris as our 4th (i think hield qualifies there)?
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I think Brooklyn beats us if healthy, possibly the Clippers as well, they had a better fitting roster than we did. Trez’s game just wasn’t built for the playoffs, our shooters couldn’t shoot in the end, and our young guys like THT weren’t quite ready. I just think there was no time to gel with the short offseason and lack of practices as well, coach could never figure out how to properly use Marc, and Schröder turned out to be a shooting guard in a PG’s body that couldn’t shoot. That’s just too many flaws in a year where conversely the Clippers backup PG Reggie Jackson played lights out and their Morris was balling out where ours missed like 80 threes in a row.

Weezy, Jul 29, 2021

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. Russ has some stuff he's still really good at some stuff where he's one of the worst in the league.

Cranjis had some of this in a thread a while back. I'll try to summarize it all. His talent grades: 2nd in playmaking, 7th in finishing, 196th in perimeter shooting.

The good side: His playmaking and finishing -- only player matching his talent grades there was LeBron. You are not getting that from any of the parts we sent out. (Keep in mind, he had the ball in his had 46% of the time, 5th in the league.)

The debatable side: He led NBA guards in offensive boards per game and outperformed win rate. On defensive boards, he was second in the NBA. That's crazy, but you do have to question at what cost? His contested rebound percentage was on par with a lot of other players, so I generally think a great rebounding guard helps everything.

Again, if anyone is familiar with Cranjis's LEBRON metric, Russ was 10th in overall impact (10th on D, 21st on O).

On the bad side, if you want him as your pick and roll playmaker, in the playoffs he's been in the bottom 20%. So the AD/WB combo while LeBron sits? Might not be a great duo. Russ's shooting issues cause you so much problems. Teams will just go under and dare WB to shoot and wipe out a lot of standard actions. So you want him on-ball because he can't space the floor, but even then you've got some problems to deal with. (For the stat geeks: Defenses went under ball screens 60% higher on him than they did Caruso. Lowest pick and roll ball handler efficiency among 79 guards/wings this past year...AC was 2nd worst, Westbrook 4th worst. WB's PPP was 0.71 and AC's was 0.66.)

The really bad: He isolated the second most of any guard and had horrible efficiency. Among guards, it was the worst in the league. The three shooting: he took easier threes than 91% of
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Stolen from Dancing Berry on LG.

LaVarBallsDad, Jul 29, 2021

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welcome home, let's bring that fire to the team.

ADKOBE, Jul 29, 2021

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Bron welcomes his newest teammate

If you have 5-10 minutes... good read from Fred Katz with The Athletic from this May

Robert Pack could never forget what Russell Westbrook’s crushed face looked like.

Pack, a Thunder assistant coach from 2013-15 who is now with the Wizards, was on the bench when Westbrook famously endured a disfiguring facial fracture in February 2015. During a hard-fought game in Portland, the point guard took an inadvertent knee to the cheek from teammate Andre Roberson.

“When he got up and he walked past us, I saw something I’d never seen before. Never. His face was sunken in,” Pack told The Athletic. “It’s almost like if you do your jaws — like, you suck your jaws in and the side of your face goes in. His face, the side, was indented. It was pushed in. … And I was like, my eyes! I was like, I couldn’t believe it.”

That’s not the end of the story, as Pack tells it. Following prompt surgery to repair his cheekbone, Westbrook tried to convince the team to let him play the next day. He failed to argue his way onto the court but returned for the Thunder’s next game in a protective mask.

Westbrook’s history is riddled with accounts like this one, instances when no one expected him to play through physical agony, but he did anyway. For the public, triple-doubles will define his legacy, especially after he toppled Oscar Robertson on Monday to become the NBA’s all-time leader in the statistic. But for those who have played with or coached him, Westbrook’s passion exemplifies him best.

He battled an ankle sprain during the 2012-13 season so severe that people around the team still remember it today. He didn’t miss a game. Westbrook fought through a torn quad during the NBA bubble last summer and then battled the same injury in his other leg this past winter, sitting for the second halves of back-to-backs but playing in the rest of the Wizards’ games. In November 2018, he missed six games because of an ankle injury and then returned earlier than expected with the afflicted area still noticeably enlarged.

“His whole ankle is swollen,” Billy Donovan, who coached Westbrook from 2015-19, remembered in a recent conversation with The Athletic. “And the guy refuses not to play. … I mean, you couldn’t believe the size of his ankle.”

Donovan still talks about the time in January 2017 when he entered the visitors’ training room in Houston after he heard a commotion. Westbrook had hurt his knee the night before and had told Donovan he would go through warmups before the Rockets game to see if he could give it a go.

The coach knew his star must be in anguish; normally, Westbrook, now 32, proceeds as if his body is devoid of aches. It was a few hours before tipoff when Donovan heard yelling from the training room.

He investigated and saw Westbrook with the trainers.

“All this treatment,” Westbrook griped. “They say it’s still not feeling well.”

The training staff told Westbrook his knee was too injured. He couldn’t play. But Westbrook wasn’t having it. He was loud and threw a roll of tape at the wall in frustration.

Donovan tried to simmer him down. “Russ, just take the game, man,” he remembers telling him. “It’s a back-to-back. Just take the game.”

Westbrook was insistent. Four years earlier, he’d snapped a consecutive-games streak that spanned for a decade; he didn’t miss one game during high school, college or his first five years in the pros. The iron-man run ended in 2013 when it took a knee injury so severe that it required three surgeries for him to finally tally a DNP.

Try telling that guy to sit out. It doesn’t go well.

“I’ll go and warm up,” Westbrook retorted. “I’m just gonna warm up!”

He pleaded his way onto the court and went through his pregame routine. As he walked off, he turned to Donovan and declared, “I’m playing!”

He dropped 49 points that night.

Players, coaches and staffers up and down the Wizards have praised the way Westbrook has changed their culture, adding an intensity that wasn’t present before the organization traded for him six months ago. His college coach Ben Howland says “his motivation comes from within” and it’s “why he is who he is.” Thunder general manager Sam Presti, who drafted him in 2008, credits his “persistence.”

Victor Oladipo has discussed how his sole season playing alongside Westbrook inspired a new work ethic. Paul George has said Westbrook “pushed” and “challenged” him to be better and then credited him for having the best season of his career in Oklahoma City. Bradley Beal has used almost identical verbiage describing the Westbrook experience.

His signifier is not round numbers. It’s his inner drive.

“We have a guy who pushes us every night. Russ pushes me. He pushes everybody to be ready to go,” Beal said. “And I think that’s something I’ve definitely channeled this year, just making sure that I’m ready to compete on a nightly basis.”

It didn’t even take a week into Westbrook’s time with the Wizards for him to deem second-year forward Rui Hachimura his project. He noticed Hachimura’s on-court hesitance and wanted to do away with it. Immediately.

He was already pumping up the 22-year-old only a few days into training camp, getting in his face throughout the team’s first practice scrimmage of the season. The energy spiked when Westbrook started calling him a “bad mother******” repeatedly. A few possessions later, Hachimura viciously dunked. It’s not a coincidence that Hachimura has credited Westbrook all season for turning him into a more aggressive player.

Just about every tale of a Westbrook practice has this sort of tone.

Video coordinators have laughed about how hard Westbrook goes at them when they have to defend him in drills. He treats them as if they’re players. He’ll trash talk them. One once said that if he just so happened to get lucky and knock the ball away from the point guard, Westbrook would plant a shoulder into his face on the next play. The word “destroy” has been commonly used to describe what he does to coaches or staff who defend him in practices. “Mercy” comes up, too. Westbrook shows none of it.

A former Thunder staffer who has received many of those hits and would undoubtedly take every one of them once again says Westbrook’s drive, even during mundane practice settings, is “what makes him great.”

Westbrook certainly appreciates the lower-level coaches he abuses in the post. When the Thunder went to the 2012 NBA Finals, he gave a significant portion of his six-figure bonus to the team’s video coordinators.

Presti has a favorite word to describe Westbrook: persistence. He wasn’t a highly-rated recruit heading into college. He barely played as a freshman. It was widely considered a reach when the Thunder drafted him No. 4 overall.

“Russell I think was somebody who people could easily identify with in Oklahoma City, because of his path,” Presti told The Athletic. “This is a city that probably, in a lot of people’s minds, wasn’t supposed to have an NBA team. Russell wasn’t supposed to be an NBA player. …

“He demonstrated persistence and a mindset that I think has been in the water in Oklahoma and that people here really come to appreciate. And I think that’s one of the reasons why he is beloved here.”

During his 2008 pre-draft workout with the Seattle SuperSonics, who moved to OKC to become the Thunder that summer, he vigorously flew through warmups to the point that Scott Brooks, an assistant coach on that team, worried Westbrook wouldn’t be able to make it to the end of the day.

“I’m like, holy crap!” Brooks said. “This guy is going 100 miles an hour, man. He’s gonna die after our second drill.”

Turns out, Brooks should have worried more about himself.

Westbrook revved up even more during a closeout drill 10 minutes later. The action was simple: he would receive a pass, Brooks — acting as the defender — had to close out on him and Westbrook would react properly, usually trying to drive by the coach.

But Brooks, who later became the Thunder’s head coach and now holds the same role in Washington, wanted to test him. He fouled him. Westbrook responded, driving his body into Brooks and finishing. So, Brooks hacked him a little harder the next time. Westbrook got more aggressive and then started getting vocal.

Westbrook isn’t practicing if he’s not talking smack — even if he’s technically in a job interview.

“He was trying to rip your arm out of your shoulder. … I’m like ‘OK, relax, young fella. Relax,’ ” Brooks said. “I just wanna get through this 45-minute workout in one piece.”

He treats teammates the same way. Cameron Payne, who the Thunder drafted in 2015, could be still recovering from his first-ever practice scrimmage as a pro. Westbrook posted him up every, single time. Seriously, every time.

“I ain’t talking about, like, sometimes, because Kev (Durant) was on my team. Every time,” Payne said. “Going to the post. Going to the post. I’m like, man, this is a different kind of guy. Even in practice, too? I’m like, golly! He plays so hard.”

Instead of playing starters vs. reserves, like usual, Westbrook and Durant used to compete on opposing teams during Thunder scrimmages. Those games would get as intense as Game 7s in a playoff series.

“If you didn’t want them to go hard, you had to turn the clock off and shut the game down,” said a staffer who regularly attended them.

Durant and Westbrook used to compete about who could arrive at practice first, which created a blue-collar culture that percolated throughout the organization. As role players will attest, it’s not so easy to stroll in for an 11 a.m. practice at 10:59 when your two stars are getting there three hours before for their own pre-practice practice.

“I think it probably fueled both those guys in a very healthy way,” Donovan said.

During training camp, when the Thunder would have two-a-days, Durant and Westbrook used to work out before the 11 a.m. practice, go through the regular practice, return a couple of hours before the evening practice for another workout and then go through another mandated practice. They turned them into four-a-days.

Their races to the facility became so ambitious that the team told the two to stop because staffers had to arrive just as early to meet them. The solution was: OK, you both come in around 7:30 a.m.; you both win.

When Payne was a rookie, Thunder assistant coach Monty Williams told him he should try to beat Westbrook to practice. Payne was showing up for 11 a.m. practices at 8:30. Of course, Westbrook would have a sweat going by then.

“I’m like, ‘Golly! I gotta get here even earlier?’ ” Payne said.

Payne tried, though he didn’t tell Westbrook.

He arrived promptly the next day, but Westbrook was already there, in the rec room eating breakfast. So, he got there even earlier the following morning.

This time? No Westbrook.

He’d done it. He’d beaten the unbeatable worker, even if his adversary had no idea they were in direct competition.

He came back the same time the next morning. No Westbrook, again. Two in a row.

And again at some obscene hour the following day. … But this time, Westbrook was there. He’d noticed a rookie beating him to practice for two consecutive days, and no way was that going to continue.

“It just helped me because it’s like — OK, this is what you gotta do to be this good,” Payne said.

Payne guesses Westbrook arrived around 6 a.m., but he never found out for sure.

“Ain’t no telling how long he was up,” Payne said.

The Thunder’s first commandment was easy to follow: Do not park in Westbrook’s parking spot. If anyone did, he made sure to have fun with the violators.

Leave your car in Westbrook’s spot at the Oklahoma City practice facility and prepare for him to perpendicularly block you in once he arrives. If a teammate ever committed the sin, Westbrook would stay at the facility later, just to mess with him. A player once drove onto the sidewalk just to avoid Westbrook’s obstructing vehicle so he could get home.

On one occasion, Durant beat Westbrook to practice and decided to celebrate with a little vehicular trash talk, rolling his car directly into Westbrook’s spot. When Westbrook arrived, he blocked Durant in, but that wasn’t enough. Surely, Durant knew Westbrook’s signature move was coming. So, Westbrook took it a step further. He got a hold of Durant’s car keys, went to the parking lot, drove Durant’s to the massive McBride Orthopedic Hospital campus across the street and left it in a faraway spot. Westbrook cackled as he jogged back from the world’s best genre of prank: one that inconveniences the prankster just to mildly inconvenience the prankee.

Westbrook obsesses with his daily routine. The greatest irony of Westbrook’s career is that someone who intentionally creates on-court chaos could be as meticulous as he is when he’s not playing a game.

He begins pregame warmups exactly three hours before tip-off. Aside from adding some more midrange and post-up drills, the workout hasn’t changed much over the last 10 years. Westbrook still ends it the same way, hoisting shots from just behind the backboard in the corner and then sprinting to the locker room as soon as he makes one. He used to bet on his success rate with assistant coaches.

Westbrook credits his parents Shannon and Russell Jr. for teaching him the value of daily consistency and also conversations he had with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, who handled their playing days similarly.

“Everything he does is planned out,” Donovan said. “You know where he is in the building at every, single minute of the day.”

People rack their brains trying to think of times when he may have slept through an alarm or hit bumper-to-bumper traffic, but they can’t recall one. He gets frustrated with players who hold up the team bus. He makes sure rookies pick up his habits, too.

During Payne’s first NBA season, Westbrook used to make the youngster go to the gas station and buy him apple Snapple before every road trip.

“I had to get that Snapple every time,” Payne laughed. “I’m talking about, ‘Nah, you got to get that Snapple. You gotta get that Snapple.’ And he would already be at the airport waiting.”

Westbrook later told Payne he didn’t care at all about the beverage. It was a ploy to make sure Payne was never late to the plane. “I just need you locked in and getting here on time,” Payne remembers him saying.

The irony, of course?

“I’d be almost late,” Payne said. “He’d be there, sitting there waiting on me, too. He used to do me like that. That’s funny.”

Westbrook’s college teammates knew the response they’d receive if they called him by his last name.

My name is Russ.

Any other address, he hated, says his college buddy and former UCLA teammate Mustafa Abdul-Hamid — or so Westbrook made it seem.

Abdul-Hamid has a theory. Westbrook didn’t mind when people called him by his surname. He creates alter-egos to play, searching for signs of disrespect he can use to motivate himself. After all, it must be exhausting for Westbrook to maintain constant ferocity without any triggers.

“You know how people talk trash and sometimes (Michael Jordan) would just make s*** up?” Abdul-Hamid said. “I feel like Russell is that way, too. Like, Russ, you ain’t really mad about certain things right now. … You’re craving a chip on your shoulder.”

It shows in Westbrook’s banter with teammates, opponents and even media. If a coach suggests he can’t do something, he insists he can. Years ago, when the two were together in OKC, Brooks accused Westbrook of playing shoddy defense and challenged him in front of the team.

“Can you guard anybody?!” he questioned.

Westbrook demanded he could and then asserted the Thunder should change their pick-and-roll coverage for the next game.

He didn’t want any help from big men. He would fight through every screen, without fail. Not only could he guard anybody, he retorted, but he would also do it by himself.

“That was another big moment of competitive desire and determination that a lot of young guys just don’t have,” Brooks said.

It’s one decade and nearly a couple hundred triple-doubles later now. But not much has changed.

“It’s a seek-and-destroy mentality,” Brooks said. “This guy is different. He’s built different. He’s wired different.”
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I really think he's going to keep us accountable and not let anyone let their foot off the gas. When your mission is a championship, that's an invaluable asset.

JSM, Jul 29, 2021

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big game james and company comment on the block buster move

ADKOBE, Jul 29, 2021

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i don't wanna play against these 3..
I say re sign Dwight & just beat people up...

LakerFanIam, Jul 29, 2021

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We really need some three point shooting now, but I’m happy we got him.

Kou, Jul 29, 2021

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Weezy said: ↑

I think Brooklyn beats us if healthy, possibly the Clippers as well, they had a better fitting roster than we did. Trez’s game just wasn’t built for the playoffs, our shooters couldn’t shoot in the end, and our young guys like THT weren’t quite ready. I just think there was no time to gel with the short offseason and lack of practices as well, coach could never figure out how to properly use Marc, and Schröder turned out to be a shooting guard in a PG’s body that couldn’t shoot. That’s just too many flaws in a year where conversely the Clippers backup PG Reggie Jackson played lights out and their Morris was balling out where ours missed like 80 threes in a row.
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True that all happened, but with a healthy Bron + AD, all of our role players would have played a lot better and their deficiencies would have been hidden. We were on fire. Remember, these pieces were all brought here to complement Bron + AD. Without Bron + AD, our role players were far from capable of leading a team on their own. Even with Bron + AD playing hurt, we were still mopping the floor with a Finals team that almost won it all.

acetabulum7, Jul 29, 2021

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JSM said: ↑

If you have 5-10 minutes... good read from Fred Katz with The Athletic from this May

I really think he's going to keep us accountable and not let anyone let their foot off the gas. When your mission is a championship, that's an invaluable asset.
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That was a good read!

TIME, Jul 29, 2021

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LakerFanIam said: ↑

i don't wanna play against these 3..
I say re-sign Dwight & just beat people up...
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Avery Bradley is not expected back in Houston. He'd be great for our perimeter defense and he's familiar with our system. Kuzma gone but I'd like to see what McKinnie can do with an uptick in minutes. Shooting? We have McLemore even if his defense is really questionable by our standards. There's bits out there of us taking a flyer again on Bullock.

About the trade...? As a fan, I'm good with it. Westbrook is on attack mode on every play. He won't be asked to shoot much but be the set-up man which he is very good at. With him and James going downhill with the defense on their heels? I like our chances.

gcclaker, Jul 29, 2021

#60

IE Lakers, LakerFanIam, lakerjones and 3 others like this.

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