Russell Westbrook is very good at a whole lot of stuff on the basketball court. One area where he has been decidedly not good for his entire career has been three-point shooting — Westbrook is a 31.1 percent shooter from deep over the course of his NBA career, with his top single-season mark coming when he hit 34.3 percent of his attempts during his MVP campaign in 2016-17.
On an Oklahoma City Thunder team that is going to be starved for shooting alongside Paul George, having a point guard who isn’t good at threes is an issue. In response, Westbrook is reportedly putting in a ton of work to refine his jumper over the summer.
ESPN’s Royce Young appeared on the latest edition of The Lowe Post podcast to talk about this offseason and the upcoming campaign for Oklahoma City. When prompted about the team’s potential shooting woes from deep, Young let it be known that Westbrook is working this summer to be part of the solution. (Head to the 11ish minute mark for the conversation.)
“He’s been working on it this summer, I’ve been told,” Young said. “That’s been a big time offseason focus, we’ll see.”
Specifically, Young mentioned that there’s one area where the Thunder want to see Westbrook make an impact from behind the arc: in catch-and-shoot situations.
“They want him to be a … what they’ve stressed Zach is work on a catch-and-shoot, become a little bit better of a catch-and-shoot guy,” Young said. “But obviously, in order to do that, there needs to be a catching before the shooting, and it’s hard to catch it from yourself.”
Westbrook is notoriously ball-dominant and was, even by his standards, not especially good from three last year, connecting at a 29.8 percent clip. While he was hardly Steph Curry, his catch-and-shoot numbers from deep were a little better — per NBA.com, 4.9 percent of Westbrook’s shot attempts were catch-and-shoot threes, which he made at a rate of 34.2 percent.
It goes without saying, but it would be huge for the Thunder and for Westbrook himself if he suddenly started hitting threes at a markedly better clip. It’s also really hard to imagine Westbrook both becoming a better shooter and more willing to give the ball to his teammates so he can be in catch-and-shoot opportunities, if only because neither things have been part of his game. But perhaps now that Westbrook is getting older and he has another superstar next to him for the foreseeable future in George, he’ll make some concessions in the form of altering his game.
