Once you become MVP, I guess all that’s left is winning a championship. Maybe in some people’s minds it becomes an expectation. Westbrook has never been closer than he was in 2012 when Kevin Durant, James Harden, and he led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the finals. That’s a long time of “coming up short.” Maybe that’s it.
Or maybe it’s his efficiency? He’s always been more reliant on things like explosiveness, and hustle, and effort to make his game work to its best. He was just intentionally better at things other players could consider a side effect of the parts of their game they were trying to focus on.
He had good vision, and, if anything, it’s improved over time. But he could get to a spot so quick that his burst would create windows through which he could make a pass. He didn’t bend a defense. The defense could be forged as strong as steel, but at Westbrook’s best, he could still tear it. Sometimes. But he super duper did it every once in a while and it was super duper cool when he did.
He’s lost a good deal of that, so maybe it’s just a reciprocal decline in fandom.
Or maybe it’s that he never especially seemed to evolve his game the ways people kept telling him he should. “Get a three point shot” was the big one. As his physical gifts declined, his shooting never really improved. He only approached being a 35 percent three-point shooter in his MVP year. This year with the Denver Nuggets, he’s at 32.6 percent.
Oh well. One can hardly say he’s done anything this year other than improve his reputation. Jokic and Westbrook have a thing. There’s no way anyone could-
Players on the Nuggets began to lose faith in Michael Malone after he gave Russell Westbrook special treatment, per @TheAthletic
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) April 10, 2025
“…All the while, Malone’s choice to continue supporting Westbrook — despite the frustration he was causing on and off the floor — ultimately led to… pic.twitter.com/h8VJAytEmp
Hey Nuggets, I’m going to need a second
Thanks. That wasn’t long enough.
It’s really cool that Russell Westbrook is still playing. It’s really fun to watch him and Jokic interact on offense. Sometimes you still see shadows of old Russ in certain moments. Who knows how much longer he will be around. It seemed like the perfect time to appreciate how great players make things around them greater.
But now everyone is fired and it’s intimated that in some small way it’s because Russell Westbrook, the player the front office brought in, was being played too much. He was playing well.
Cool. Whatever. I give up.