Russell Westbrook – Epic season in review
By Rich Condon
The Westbrook Era begins:
Like other epic heroes, Russell was undone by his hubris. When he lets the game come to him, he’s unstoppable. When he thinks he has to be the one to win by himself, and he chucks up 35 shots, well, sometimes that works too. However, in most instances, it proves to be the undoing of the OKC Thunder.
There’s an argument to even this. The OKC Thunder supporting cast was totally underwhelming and often times over-matched this season. Why shouldn’t Russ do it all himself when it’s hard to trust the pieces around him?
The answer, to me, is rather simple: it’s a team game. If the opposing team is relatively sure one player is going to shoot the ball every time down the court, they’re going to key in on said player. Especially in the playoffs. Even more so if said player has a streaky jump shot.
We even saw this in the regular season against the smarter teams of the NBA, most notably in KD’s return to OKC.
It was a fun stretch when Steve Kerr switched Kevin Durant onto Russell Westbrook defensively. It’s what the entirety of the NBA world wanted to see. However, Russ acquiring his target in search-and-destroy mode was exactly what the Warriors wanted.
The rhythm of the offense is thrown out of whack when one player takes over for too long. The other four players who are just standing around can lose interest. They run cold. They check out defensively. With a team like the OKC Thunder, who’s offense, let’s face it, isn’t a strong point; this is catastrophic.
It was the OKC Thunder’s undoing in the playoffs. Sure, they’re awful when Russ is on the bench. The way the team is built, however, that’s going to be the case no matter which version of Russ shows up.
OKC wouldn’t have made it to the playoffs without Russ, and they wouldn’t have won the single game they did win without him.
Russ also cost them Game Two and Game Five. In Game Two, Westbrook finished with a 51 point, 13 assist, and 10 rebound triple-double. It was another piece of history for Russ: the only 50 point triple-double in the NBA playoffs.
However, Westbrook took an ungodly 43 shots, connecting on 17 of them (39.5 percent). The OKC Thunder took 97 shots in Game Two, meaning Westbrook took 44 percent of his team’s shots. And only connected on 39.5 percent of them.
In Game Five Westbrook finished with 47 points on 34 shots. He shot 44 percent. Better. However, in Game Five, Russ shot 5-18 from three, or 27.8 percent. The OKC Thunder took 30 three point attempts in Game Five. Translation: Russell took 60 percent of the Thunder’s three-point shots and converted on less than 30 percent of them.