Can we stop pretending Westbrook wasn't a good teammate/leader?

[OhayoKD]

Westbrook posts all-time creation metrics, all-time playoff impact, all-time teammate effeciency splits, has a case as the best performer on a team that beat down the 70 win-srs Spurs(before taking the 70-srs Warriors to 7) and...is apparently to many a terrible teammate/lockeroom cancer who ruins everything he touches because he only cares about his triple-doubles. Yeah let's see how this take lines up with reality...

Exhibit A Reporter asks questions to Adams that implicitly paint OKC as a one-man team against the Rockets in his MVP year. Westbrook refuses to humor the question

Watch on YouTube

Exhibit B Basically secures OKC a smooth rebuild by helping convince Paul George to sign long-term(he was expected to be a 1-year rental):
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24960627/the-story-how-russell-westbrook-convinced-paul-george-stay-oklahoma-city

Exhibit C Remember how Westbrook "forced Durant out"? Yeah uh...

Read on Twitter

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E909634206355066880%7Ctwgr%5Ecf9cfbb82932f6e73c047046d01930693cbb0005%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbasketball%2Fkevin-durant-appears-trash-thunder-coach-teammates-article-1.3504175

Notice how in these tweets, where KD is under the impression he's anonymous, Westbrook is excepted from the rest of the team?

Why would KD, who has no issue taking shots at previous teammates repeatedly go out of his way to not blame Westbrook?

Here's what Durant said when directly asked about Westbrook:

Watch on YouTube

Westbrook had a sharp decline as an basketball player, but the idea he is a negative off-court presence seems mostly like a baseless narrative to me

[MyUniBroDavis]

Westbrook isn’t a negative off the court presence at all he just was with the Lakers apparently for some guys lol

It is what it is sometimes personalities don’t fit

[rk2023]

Phenomenal person, to some extent underrated and overhated at his very best. People aren’t aware how team and impact measures view his best OKC years very highly, which is correlated with / couldn’t be mentioned without his all time playmaking. In terms of on-ball creators, I would only take Magic, Nash, Paul, James, Jokic and Robertson over Westbrook’s best spree of 2014-17

[JimmyFromNz]

I can't recall many instances of him being a poor leader, in fact during in his prime he's a perfect example of a 'follow me' leadership style that translates.

By all accounts his teammates admire that too.

Other characteristics are open for a bit more critique. He's commonly abrasive, combative and lacks self awareness (e.g. many NBA players). That is probably where people incorrectly conflate this with the teammate relationship.

[homecourtloss]

Westbrook posts all-time creation metrics, all-time playoff impact, all-time teammate effeciency splits, has a case as the best performer on a team that beat down the 70 win-srs Spurs(before taking the 70-srs Warriors to 7) and...is apparently to many a terrible teammate/lockeroom cancer who ruins everything he touches because he only cares about his triple-doubles. Yeah let's see how this take lines up with reality...

Exhibit A Reporter asks questions to Adams that implicitly paint OKC as a one-man team against the Rockets in his MVP year. Westbrook refuses to humor the question

Watch on YouTube

Exhibit B Basically secures OKC a smooth rebuild by helping convince Paul George to sign long-term(he was expected to be a 1-year rental):
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24960627/the-story-how-russell-westbrook-convinced-paul-george-stay-oklahoma-city

Exhibit C Remember how Westbrook "forced Durant out"? Yeah uh...

Read on Twitter

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E909634206355066880%7Ctwgr%5Ecf9cfbb82932f6e73c047046d01930693cbb0005%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbasketball%2Fkevin-durant-appears-trash-thunder-coach-teammates-article-1.3504175

Notice how in these tweets, where KD is under the impression he's anonymous, Westbrook is excepted from the rest of the team?

Why would KD, who has no issue taking shots at previous teammates repeatedly go out of his way to not blame Westbrook?

Here's what Durant said when directly asked about Westbrook:

Watch on YouTube

Westbrook had a sharp decline as an basketball player, but the idea he is a negative off-court presence seems mostly like a baseless narrative to me

Westbrook is an all-time great creator, which is a reason why he can elevate offenses even with mediocre efficiency, poor finishing, poor transition finishing, etc. unfortunately, he lost a little bit of athleticism, his defense fell off, and his free-throw shooting in shooting otherwise really fell off, which caused a lot of problems for the Lakers, especially since he took up so much salary. Also, this past year, LeBron and Westbrook on court, wasn’t the problem:

The Lakers found a way for LeBron and Westbrook to work together this year, but the problem was that if LeBron wasn’t on the court the Lakers had too many gaps, not enough neutral or plus players, and Westbrook by himself on court couldn’t do anything.

Lakers in 2022-2023 with Westbrook

Westbrook + LeBron ON court (all games): 114.2 ORtg, 108.2 DRtg, +6.0 NET
Westbrook + LeBron ON court after 2-10 start: 117.8 ORtg, 108.7 DRtg, +9.1 NET
Westbrook + LeBron ON court, AD OFF court (all games): 119.8 ORtg, 111.8 DRtg, +8.0 NET
Westbrook + LeBron ON court after AD’s injury in December (24 games): 118.7 ORtg, 103.9 DRtg, +14.8 NET

Those are some pretty impressive numbers, but he wasn’t able to make it work in other situations. Westbrook created a lot of easy shirts for LeBron.

They shouldn’t take away from everything that he has done in the player that he used to be as well.

[penbeast0]

I think most of the criticism was his contract creating problems, rather than his personality. Yes, he was an alpha dog without the skills to really take that role in LA, but it was the money issues that were the big problem.

[lessthanjake]

I’ve not really heard much criticism about him being toxic interpersonally. My understanding was that players like him. The criticism that I’ve seen is more about ball dominance, decision-making, shot selection, etc.

[Buckets22]

He also built houses for his teammates with all the bricks.

[Colbinii]

He also built houses for his teammates with all the bricks.

This is like walking into a good conversation at a party, hearing one sentence, and spewing some incoherent and off-topic comment completely unrelated to what the conversation was about.

[MartinToVaught]

I’ve not really heard much criticism about him being toxic interpersonally. My understanding was that players like him. The criticism that I’ve seen is more about ball dominance, decision-making, shot selection, etc.

The media called him a "locker room vampire" when he was on the Lakers.

"Nobody wants to play with Westbrook" was also a common excuse for why KD just had to join Steph's 73-win team after losing to them.

Russ is flawed, as the overwhelming majority of players are, but people make him sound like Kyrie. He's still useful in the right situation/role and players tend to like playing with him.

[Cavsfansince84]

I’ve not really heard much criticism about him being toxic interpersonally. My understanding was that players like him. The criticism that I’ve seen is more about ball dominance, decision-making, shot selection, etc.

The media called him a "locker room vampire" when he was on the Lakers.

"Nobody wants to play with Westbrook" was also a common excuse for why KD just had to join Steph's 73-win team after losing to them.

Russ is flawed, as the overwhelming majority of players are, but people make him sound like Kyrie. He's still useful in the right situation/role and players tend to like playing with him.

The bolded doesn't have to be related to off court stuff. It can be simply due to how WB plays and his style of leadership. I don't think that means KD had to join the Warriors though. It's almost two completely different things. It's also easier to like playing with him imo when you are a role player as opposed to someone who should have more primacy in an offense.

[f4p]

westbrook got overhated on in his early career. people ignored that durant didn't always go get the ball and that's why russ had to shoot more than it was seemingly warranted and ignored the unbelievable rim pressure he created and got his teammates lots of open looks, even if russ was often out of control and couldn't finish like someone you would expect to for how easily he got to the rim.

but that's early career russ. since 2018 russ has shown himself to be extremely hard-headed and with a complete lack of self-awareness of how his game has fallen off. maybe he simply couldn't change, but he seemingly showing no inclination to up his defense as his offense fell off (watch his activity this year in the phoenix series for what he would have been capable of), no inclination to lower his turnovers, no inclination to avoid getting into mano a mano battles with people when he absolutely couldn't back it up any more. he does things like trash talk the lakers in the 2020 playoffs for not doubling him...in a game he was down 29...while having one of the worst series ever. he maintained the ego and playstyle of pre-2018 russ with a disastrous combination of negatives like sub-replacement level TS%, huge turnovers, and no attention paid on the defensive end. it's hard to think of someone who brought a higher volume of negatives to the table. most people with the above weaknesses either self-limit their volume or are forced to limit their volume because they are on the bench.

since we remember more recent things, russ is currently viewed based mostly on his post-2017 career. eventually, that will probably fade and he will be remembered more for the pre-2018 stuff, when he was genuinely great.

[OhayoKD]

I’ve not really heard much criticism about him being toxic interpersonally. My understanding was that players like him. The criticism that I’ve seen is more about ball dominance, decision-making, shot selection, etc.

The media called him a "locker room vampire" when he was on the Lakers.

"Nobody wants to play with Westbrook" was also a common excuse for why KD just had to join Steph's 73-win team after losing to them.

Russ is flawed, as the overwhelming majority of players are, but people make him sound like Kyrie. He's still useful in the right situation/role and players tend to like playing with him.

The bolded doesn't have to be related to off court stuff. It can be simply due to how WB plays and his style of leadership. I don't think that means KD had to join the Warriors though. It's almost two completely different things. It's also easier to like playing with him imo when you are a role player as opposed to someone who should have more primacy in an offense.

Kevin Durant should not have more primacy in an offense. As he has repeatedly showed us, increasing his primary just hurts his efficiency and KD is not able to up his volume to compensate. Russ is flawed just like KD is flawed. But Russell pretty much covered all his flaws while KD would sometimes struggle to cover Westbrook's.

KD leaving because of Russ remains entirely baseless and seems dubious when KD on what he thought was an anonymous burner specifically outlined basketball reasons as a reson for him to leave and went out of his way to exempt Russell.

[Jaivl]

WB is cool. Durant is not. Nothing new for OKC fans.

Westbrook posts (...) all-time playoff impact, all-time teammate effeciency splits

Even considering the very small sample 2017 does look fantastic -- beyond that I don't think that's the case.

He looks better than Durant though, which I guess is the point.

[Blame Rasho]

He has been overhated for his career. In the other thread with Lowry I see some mind numbing logic thrown out. Before his MVP year, he was just a beast. You never saw him take days off. Always the one guy in the best shape on the court. He honestly reminded me of a boxer who had an aura that refused to lose. Even to this day he has that in him. I rather have that and try to manage that than a guy who wilts under pressure. Seldom if anyone speaks bad about him. I hope years from now people look at him in a different light. He isn’t a starbury, francis, Davis, or Irving… he was just a mofo who played hard each and every night.

[Tracymcgoaty]

I wish he'd come to where i live and start building apartments with all those bricks he's laying at record pace.

Dude is faster at building rows of buildings than Saudis are at building giant towers that aren't all that **** impressive.

[Jaivl]

I wish he'd come to where i live and start building apartments with all those bricks he's laying at record pace.

Dude is faster at building rows of buildings than Saudis are at building giant towers that aren't all that **** impressive.

He's being "meh" to "horrible" outside of OKC, but that's not really relevant when judging him as a player, is it?

[Colbinii]

I wish he'd come to where i live and start building apartments with all those bricks he's laying at record pace.

Dude is faster at building rows of buildings than Saudis are at building giant towers that aren't all that **** impressive.

He's being "meh" to "horrible" outside of OKC, but that's not really relevant when judging him as a player, is it?

How else is someone like Tracymcgoaty going to uphold is reputation as the poster he is?

This is his purpose on the forum, though he strayed too far from the General Board.

[Tracymcgoaty]

I wish he'd come to where i live and start building apartments with all those bricks he's laying at record pace.

Dude is faster at building rows of buildings than Saudis are at building giant towers that aren't all that **** impressive.

He's being "meh" to "horrible" outside of OKC, but that's not really relevant when judging him as a player, is it?

All jokes aside i agree with you on that. His overall resume speak for itself. And every guy thats played with him lauds WB as a great dude.

But his tenure in LA really disgusted me in all honesty. Gonna take a little bit more time to digest.

Leadership though might be different. But him going to Washington getting them into the playoffs shows the kind of impact he can have when he's the main guy creating.

[Tracymcgoaty]

I wish he'd come to where i live and start building apartments with all those bricks he's laying at record pace.

Dude is faster at building rows of buildings than Saudis are at building giant towers that aren't all that **** impressive.

He's being "meh" to "horrible" outside of OKC, but that's not really relevant when judging him as a player, is it?

How else is someone like Tracymcgoaty going to uphold is reputation as the poster he is?

This is his purpose on the forum, though he strayed too far from the General Board.

I didn't know i had a reputation

Cant be good.