The limits of Russell Westbrook’s confidence

Of all the things that make Russell Westbrook special, confidence may be his greatest natural resource. It is imbued in his every on-court action, from cannonball drives to ferocious rebounds. But perhaps nothing exemplifies his deep well of belief in himself than the willingness to let it fly from beyond the arc.

Westbrook is currently shooting 26.5 percent on 3-pointers and is on track to set an NBA record for the lowest 3-point percentage in a season for a player with at least 300 attempts. Despite his historic inaccuracy, Westbrook is in the top-40 in 3-point attempts this season. That includes ranking 26th in pull-up attempts. He does not hesitate to let it fly at any moment. And, clearly, he thinks they’re going in. And, 73.5 percent of the time, he is proven wrong.

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with that span of time, those seconds between when the ball leaves his hand, and he knows it’s going in, and when the ball caroms off the rim, and he knows it isn’t. At some point, his supreme confidence must confront the reality of each individual shot. When does that happen and what does it look like?

There are a few different possibilities for what unfolds in Westbrook’s head as he watches the trajectory of his 3-point shots.

THEORY 1: REALITY

The first possibility is that Westbrook, at least internally, recognizes the reality of the situation fairly quickly. As it becomes increasingly clear that the shot is not going on his confidence tracks with that awareness in a linear fashion.

THEORY 2: FANTASY

The second possibility is that his confidence endures much longer than it has any right to. His confidence in the shot going in stays relatively high even as it flies farther and farther off axis, and doesn’t truly begin to plummet until the fact that he’s missed is essentially impossible to ignore.

The thing is, neither of these theories really reconcile with the fact that by the next time he touches the ball, Westbrook’s confidence will have returned to 100 percent. That would mean that, in pathological fashion, once the shot is officially missed it is completely wiped from his memory and his confidence is unaffected by any residual recollection of this shot or any of the ones that have come before it. A great many people seem to ascribe to this explanation, but it does open the door to a third possibility.

THEORY 3: MULTIPLE UNIVERSES

It is possible that Westbrook’s confidence is entirely impervious to reality. That even when presented with incontrovertible evidence that he has missed a shot, he is somehow able to completely shed any emotional, intellectual or metaphysical impacts of said miss. That’s not to say that Westbrook is delusional — when asked after a game he could certainly acknowledge that some of the 3-point shots he took that night did not go in. But, like Schrodinger’s Cat, he is able to simultaneously exist in two realities — the one where he shoots, and the other, separate one, where he misses. He is not just able to exist in the two realities but he is able to separate them and prevent the kind of co-mingling that could rend the fabric of space and time.

If this theory were to hold true, the implications would be immense for psychology, physics, metaphysics, telekinesis, magic, and a host of other fields — confirmation of not just multiple universes but of super-beings who can travel between them. Of course, breakthroughs of this nature, the ones that challenge our very fundamental understanding of existence, are always resisted at first. I guess it’s easier to just say he’s selfish and stubborn.