NBA 75: At No. 46, Russell Westbrook is a mercurial, private perfectionist and the triple-double king

Welcome to the NBA 75, The Athletic’s countdown of the 75 best players in NBA history, in honor of the league’s diamond anniversary. From Nov. 1 through Feb. 18, we’ll unveil a new player on the list every weekday except for Dec. 27-31, culminating with the man picked by a panel of The Athletic NBA staff members as the greatest of all time.

For a man who lets his game do most of his talking, Russell Westbrook has a hell of a list of soundbites attached to a Hall of Fame career.

In a playoff series, the fiery guard from Los Angeles County once said his only friend on the basketball court is Spalding. The patron saint of Oklahoma City Thunder basketball once took umbrage when asked if there was anything special about the way Celtics guard Marcus Smart played against him. Westbrook firmly told a reporter he didn’t agree.

“He had a good game. Eighty-two games, I do this. Don’t get it twisted,” Westbrook said.

For as criticized as he is, Mr. Triple-Double’s finest off-court quote might have been in 2019. Before a game near the All-Star break, the guard gave a frank explanation of who he is and why his career has played out the way it has — rather successfully.

“I’ve been blessed with the talent to not give a fuck,” Westbrook said.

Today was probably the longest and most candidly Russell Westbrook has spoken this season.

On the conversation/criticism about his game, he says he’s been disengaged from that since he started playing basketball.

How? “I’ve been blessed with the talent to not give a f***.” pic.twitter.com/wdBDdPTNzx

— Erik Horne (@ErikkHorne) February 13, 2019

The quote, like his game, was unflinching, unassailable and undeterred by any attempts to deconstruct a career that has been built on something that stretches beyond his athletic gifts. Yes, Russell Westbrook will go down as the triple-double king and one of the finest athletes the NBA has ever seen, but his greatest gift may be the thickness of his skin.

Even if you look closely and see cracks in the façade, you’ll inevitably see Westbrook snarling back. His odyssey to be No. 46 in The Athletic’s list of the NBA’s 75 greatest players has been as much a testament to his mental will as his physical or statistical feats.

When Westbrook was holding court with the media on that February day, his answers were direct and sharp but delivered with introspection rather than his usual way of keeping the media at arm’s length.

The rare times Westbrook let you in, you listened.

“Regardless of what happens, it doesn’t change the way I live, what I think,” Westbrook said of the criticism. “I have an unbelievable family. Great friends. An unbelievable life. Unbelievable job. I make a lot of money at my job. I’m extremely blessed, thankful, humble. I haven’t been in trouble. I don’t cause any problems. I’m perfectly fine. I’m living my best life, and I can’t complain one bit.

“He say, she say, what somebody says about shooting, passing, dribbling, every year it’s something … they’ve got to make up something about me, which is fine, it’s good. One thing I always know is if they’re not talking about you, you’re not doing something right.”

There are few Hall of Fame talents who have had their wrongs highlighted as much as what they do right. The turnovers, the inefficient shooting, the questionable late-game decision-making, they all bubble to the surface of any Westbrook discussion.

Westbrook plays the game in a take-it-or-leave-it, unrelenting way that doesn’t pair well with the often unnuanced discourse about basketball on social media. Even before Twitter exploded, Westbrook was often the scapegoat while Kevin Durant — the elongated, efficient scoring machine to Westbrook’s battering ram of a ballhandler — was given a pass, or softer rebuke, from critics of the Thunder’s style of play.

This is too bad, because amid the Westbrook wrongs, there have been so many rights.

No guard in NBA history has been a better rebounder than Westbrook. (Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)

In Westbrook’s first few seasons, the biggest debate was about his position. Was he a point guard or not? Should he get off the ball more? In 2008, Westbrook’s first season in the NBA, Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Tony Parker were among the top lead ballhanders in the league — all players who have defined their careers with styles closer to what’s considered traditional pass-first point guard play.

But Westbrook, along with 2008 No. 1 pick Derrick Rose, were the new breed of lead ballhandlers — bigger, more explosive and with less of an instinct to slow their path to a bucket in the name of an egalitarian offense. Westbrook entered the league as a one-man fast break coupled with a mentality to let no one stop him from getting to the rim. Thus, the term “attack guard” was born.

“My job is to stay in attack mode and try and score and try to make plays happen,” Westbrook said in 2014 after he scored 29 points, but needed 27 shots and went 0-for-6 from the field in the final 3 1/2 minutes of a two-point loss to the Pelicans. “If I miss, then I miss. I’m going to live and die by that every night, regardless of what happens.”

That determination has resulted in a lot of points and an absurd amount in the paint for a player of Westbrook’s height. Since 2008, the 6-foot-3 Westbrook’s average position among the league leaders in paint points is 23.5, which includes a 10-year run from 2010 to 2020 where he never ranked lower than 19th in a full season.

This is not a statistical domain for players 6-3 or shorter.

“I used to always say he’s going to probably go down as the third-best point guard ever, but I think he’s passed one and he’s going to go down as probably the second-best,” said Scott Brooks last season. Brooks coached Westbrook in Oklahoma City and Washington. “One is obviously Magic (Johnson). What he does, there’s no point guard that has ever done it. Nobody.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to see him for eight years do a lot of things that are pretty much superhuman at times. Point guards don’t do what he does. They aren’t built that way. There might be some that shoot better, there might be some that probably can do certain things better. But there’s nobody in the history of the game that can do what he does throughout the stat sheet. That guy is as high as level of a player this league has ever seen.”

He’s also arguably the best rebounding guard in NBA history.

Westbrook’s rebounding percentage among guards who’ve played 500 NBA games (11.7) is No. 1 in league history. But even before 2016-17, when Westbrook pushed the triple-double into the nightly NBA discussion, Westbrook’s rebounding percentage was 9.3 in his first eight seasons, good for sixth all-time among guards.

Westbrook’s run of triple-doubles since 2015-16 is unprecedented, so much so that much of the basketball community has become desensitized and prone to dissection of the feat and how it applies to the context of winning and effective basketball. Seth Partnow wrote an informative excerpt for his book, “The Midrange Theory,” in which he accurately parses through some of the flimsiness of Westbrook’s defensive rebounding numbers. I was there for every season of the triple-double craze, and it holds up. Steven Adams and anyone within earshot of Westbrook was giving up uncontested defensive rebounds in the lane line during free throws, boxing out their assignments for Westbrook to fly in for the stat.

But that wasn’t every time, and that doesn’t factor in that Westbrook is 6-3 and pulls down boards at a greater frequency than players almost a foot taller. It also doesn’t account for Westbrook being an insatiable offensive rebounder, one who stole back countless possessions — or, if we’re counting, 1,611 offensive rebounds in his 14-year career, twice as many as the next guard, Dwyane Wade (860), in that span — via sheer effort. When’s the last time you saw a guard get a standing ovation for offensive rebounding?

“I’m pretty sure if everybody could do it, they would do it,” Westbrook said in April of the triple-doubles. “I honestly make sure I impact the game in many ways every night — defending, rebounding, passing, whatever it is my team needs from me to win. That’s what I do. I don’t care what people think about it. …

“I think it’s very interesting that it’s not useful when I’m doing it. It wasn’t useful when Magic (Johnson) and Oscar (Robertson) and those guys were doing it? Now that I do it and it looks easy; this shit ain’t easy, though. I’ll tell you that. It ain’t easy.”

The 2015-16 season was the turning point in Westbrook’s evolution from elite rebounding guard to a statistical anomaly, when he went from 11 triple-doubles in 2014-15 to 18, the most in a single season since Magic Johnson in 1982. As of now, he sits on 189 for his career, No. 1 all-time and a number that should hold for a while considering the next closest active player, LeBron James, earned his 100th Thursday night.

As with most things Westbrook, there’s a nuance that gets buried under noise, disdain for the aesthetics of his game or the result that suffocates what was accomplished in the run-up.

Lost in a run of three consecutive years averaging a triple-double from 2017 to 2019 are the first eight years of Westbrook’s career that produced four Western Conference finals appearances, an NBA Finals appearance, five All-Star nods, five All-NBA selections, a scoring title and consecutive All-Star Game MVP awards. Westbrook won MVP in 2017 after posting an NBA-record 42 triple-doubles in 81 games, but even that trophy gets categorized as an award won on the triple-double narrative instead of what it was: He was the best high-volume clutch time player in the NBA that season, elevating a team of ill-fitting parts to the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference in the wake of Durant’s departure to Golden State.

In 2012, when the “Let Westbrook Be Westbrook” internet revolution — a call for the basketball community to embrace the folly and fury of Westbrook’s game so he can play his best — was in full force, the Thunder weren’t so bad, either. For all the groans about Westbrook taking shots away from Durant, the pairing managed the second-best record in the NBA from Westbrook’s first day in the league in 2008 to his final game with Durant in 2016. Imperfect as they were together, they were still better than 28 of 30 teams in that stretch. Only the Spurs were better.

Eight years. Once, the Durant-Westbrook era was bemoaned for what it didn’t accomplish, but since the rise of player empowerment and the seemingly year-to-year movement of All-Stars to different teams, eight years of an All-Star pairing feels like a lifetime.

Westbrook has averaged a triple-double in four of the last five seasons while leading the league in assists three times in that span. (Bart Young / NBAE via Getty Images)

Westbrook, who entered the league at 19, accomplished more in his first five years in the league (All-Rookie first-team, four playoff appearances, three All-Star Games, two conference finals appearances, an NBA Finals appearance) than many of the league’s stars currently held in higher regard for their efficiency despite never being a part of any sustained success at the professional level. Stretch that view out to eight years, and while the partnership between him and Durant didn’t produce a championship, it can be considered one of the great duos in league history.

Time also leads us to forget where we started. When Westbrook entered the league, the then-Seattle SuperSonics selecting him at No. 4 overall seemed like a reach. But Westbrook leads a solid 2008 draft class in career win shares (106), points per game (23.1) and assists (8.5). He’s second in rebounds (7.4) behind Kevin Love and DeAndre Jordan.

It’s fitting that Westbrook’s stats can lump in with guards, forwards and centers. Westbrook’s never had true contemporaries as far as positions or conventions. He’s always played bigger than 6-3, his game louder than one of the smaller guys on the court. In a post-dress code NBA, he was one of the first players to stretch the boundaries of attire, making the pregame walk to the locker room and the postgame podium a fashion show. He’s desensitized us on and off the court, reinventing the modern player’s prioritization of his “fit” and what is acceptable to wear to work.

The attitude Westbrook has on the court isn’t a coincidence. It’s a mantra, a way of life that validates every criticism thrown his way. It’s the late-bloomer, the skinny, 5-10 kid from southern California who took that late offer from UCLA as a senior in high school, blew through Westwood like a tornado and left an impression on Thunder general manager Sam Presti from the onset.

“I think people miss the point,” Presti told ESPN in 2017. “The thing I’m impressed with isn’t the statistical accomplishments. What he’s doing is more a feat of mental toughness and mental endurance.”

It’s why after all the points, rebounds and assists, a man at peace with his journey could speak with full confidence about what it took to get there — fueled by a question that will go into the annals of NBA history as the title of his unique chapter.

“It’s the reason I have the motto of ‘Why Not?’ Westbrook said in 2019. “It’s what I believe in. It’s truly what I stand by, because there are many people in the world that will let somebody or people tell them they can or cannot do something. ‘Oh, that can’t happen again. You can’t do that again. You may never see that again.’

“Those words I don’t use in my vocabulary. ‘Can’t. Never.’ It doesn’t work. Why not me? Why not be able to do something to change the culture, change basketball, change the way it’s played? I just think differently, man, and that’s how I’ve always thought.”

Career stats#: G: 943, Pts.: 23.2, Reb.: 7.4, Ast.: 8.5, FG%: .437, FT%: .790, Win Shares: 104.8, PER: 23.2

The Athletic NBA 75 Panel points: 420 | Hollinger GOAT Points*: 160.3

Accolades: NBA MVP (’17), Nine-time All-NBA, Nine-time All-Star, Scoring champ (’15, ’17), Assists champ (’18, ’19, ’21), Olympic gold (’12), NBA 75th Anniversary Team (’21)

#Through the 2020-21 season

*A rating of a player’s accumulated accomplishments at the highest levels, based mostly on comparable historical factors, determined heavily but not completely by contemporary evaluations (i.e. awards and All-Star selections). Emphasis is given to the most outstanding achievements — MVP award shares, All-NBA teams, and production above and beyond what is typically an All-Star level.

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photo: Zach Beeker / NBAE via Getty Images)