Austin Rivers Predicted Russell Westbrook’s Insane Triple-Double Season

Russell Westbrook tied Oscar Robertson‘s mark for triple-doubles in a season on Tuesday, and now we know one NBA player had the foresight to see it coming.

Some web sleuths scrolled back through the timeline of Los Angeles Clippers guard Austin Rivers‘ Twitter timeline to find a prescient tweet about Westbrook’s chances at history with Kevin Durant out of the picture.

So Rivers is predicted that Russ could do what only Oscar Robertson has done in NBA history — average a triple-double for the season. Westbrook is, of course, on pace to do exactly that. Which makes this tweet not only a wild prediction but a wildly correct one.

And check the timestamp on that Tweet! July 4 of last year! That’s the same day Kevin Durant announced he was going to Golden State with a post on The Player’s Tribune. That means that KD left Oklahoma City and Rivers immediately thought Russ was going to go off this season. And he was right.

I’d like to think Austin Rivers was at a barbecue somewhere thinking about the NBA’s changing landscape and imagining Westbrook doing everything in his power to keep the Thunder relevant. That’s a smart observer playing for the Clippers these days. His dad must be proud.

Westbrook, meanwhile, got oh-so-close to history against the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday in a 103-100 win on the road.

The best part about this all is that Rivers implies that getting a triple-double in the modern NBA is even more impressive than it was back in the early ’60s, something older players like Dennis Rodman clearly think is incorrect. Those dang millennials are at it again.

It feels like an eventuality that Russ smashes Robertson and joins him as the only other player to ever average a triple-double for the season. Knowing that a fellow NBA player saw this all coming somehow makes it all that much more impressive for everyone involved.