When Kevin Durant left the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors, all eyes turned to Russell Westbrook. His team just got measurably worse, and with a year before his own free agency, many wondered if he was going to follow Durant’s lead and join a team more ready to contend for a championship. And if the Thunder were worried he would do that, they would have to consider trading him ahead of that decision. But all the people who speculated like that didn’t know Westbrook at all.
In Lee Jenkins’ amazingly deep feature on Russ, we learned a lot more about what makes the phenomenal guard tick, and if you know that, you knew that Russ wasn’t going anywhere.
“I like my team,” Westbrook told [his friend Donnell Beverly]. “I still really like my team.” His tone took Beverly back a decade, to the blank navy thermal sweatshirts they wore in layup lines at Leuzinger High, as rivals from Westchester and Artesia rocked shiny jackets with shoe company logos. Westbrook, desperate for a college scholarship, could have mulled a transfer. “Oh no,” he says now, cutting off the question. “No, no, no. That school was where I’m from. It’s where my friends went. I was never going to leave. I was never going to be a follower.”
Any personal insight about Russ that has trickled out through the years has mentioned how long it takes for him to build trust with a person or and individual. He just likes to keep things close to the vest, as his lack of public reaction (aside from some cupcakes) when Durant left showed. But once he forms a bond, it’s going to take heaven and earth to get him to break it. Let’s go back to that high school story once more to prove it:
Late in his senior season one player quit and two others were ruled academically ineligible. “You can guess how he responded,” Beverly says. “‘Forget ’em. We’ll go with what we got. We’ll run with who we have. We’ll fight to the end.’” When Leuzinger fell in the sectional quarterfinals, finishing 25–4, Westbrook staggered to the locker room with cramps buckling both legs. Beverly eyed his fuming friend and worried he might slug an opponent. But Westbrook felt oddly at peace. “You don’t win a championship every year,” he says. “The moment, the process, the ups and downs, the bumps and bruises, are special to me. We didn’t win it all, but we became better, we became closer.” He savored the struggle. He treasured the crew.
Learning these stories makes Westbrook’s decision to commit to an extension in Oklahoma City fall into perspective. The culture that the Thunder painstakingly constructed around Russ and KD to support them and their idiosyncracies may not have been enough to keep Durant, but they showed they cared for long enough to make Westbrook care about them — and to Russ, that’s more important than a championship.
Other fascinating details from the Westbrook profile include his profound sense of order and control that rules everything from his cleanliness to punctuality, both of which are unparalleled. He dives into the minutiae of everything he does, including his bills. One more anecdote, we promise:
He pays his own bills, a rarity in the NBA, hauling stacks of them into the Thunder lunch room. “This isn’t $32,” a staffer heard him grouse at a miscalculated invoice.
Remember that the persistent narrative surrounding Russ’s basketball career is that he plays out of control, that he needs to dial it back and play within himself — it couldn’t be in starker contrast to the man off the court. If this profile doesn’t make you root for Russ, we don’t have anything else to talk about.
(Via Sports Illustrated)
