One of the craziest developments the past few days is just how close Russell Westbrook is to averaging a triple double for the second straight season. Before last year, nobody believed it was possible in the modern era. Then Westbrook did it and, in the process, altered the history books.
Still, we saw it as something of an anomaly. He’d lost his mind a little bit after Kevin Durant’s departure to the Warriors and approached every game on a competitive rampage. No chance he or anyone else would ever do it again. But here we are just a year later, and heading into the final game of the regular season, Russ needs just 16 rebounds to make it happen again.
The rebounding portion of his triple double rampage has been a topic of constant conversation for some time, as some think he hunts them out to the detriment of the team or, at the least, at times steals rebounds from teammates at times to pad his numbers. The Thunder wrap things up at home on Wednesday night against the reeling Grizzlies, and when asked about whether Russ might be chasing rebounds in order to get the stats he needs, teammate Carmelo Anthony had a pretty interesting response now one full season into the Westbrook experience.
Carmelo Anthony on Russell Westbrook’s rebounding, if he “steals” rebounds and if the team cares or not: pic.twitter.com/rtkbAmQjaI
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) April 10, 2018
“Sometimes you wanna fight him a little bit, push him out the way, you know. But, for me, it’s good to have a guard like that being able to crack back and get rebounds. He still sometimes steals rebounds sometimes, but any time you have a guard like that to come back and rebound the way that he does, because we wanna push the break and when he gets it off the rebound he’s able to jump start the break, a lot of good things happen.
“We got a defensive rebound. I don’t think nobody thinks twice about that. As long as we get the rebound, I don’t think we worry about that. Individually, we’re not like “Damn, I gotta get this rebound, I gotta rebound more.” As long as we get the rebound, we’re all cool with that.”
What’s even more insane is that this news is mostly an afterthought. James Harden essentially has the MVP race locked up, and Westbrook hasn’t even been in the discussion for most of the season.
Westbrook’s plight is starting to mirror LeBron’s in that his outrageous stat lines have become so commonplace that we tend take them for granted and, like James’ Cavs, the Thunder have not lived up to lofty expectations this season. Yet future generations will almost certainly look back at this and marvel at the pure wonder that has been Westbrook’s two-year (and maybe longer) run of productivity.
