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Always On Russell Westbrook’s relentless energy and intensity have stabilized the Wizards’ season.
Ned Dishman (NBA Photos)
Russell Westbrook
By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong In December, the Washington Wizards gathered on the court for a 10 a.m. shootaround before a 7 p.m. preseason game when NBA veteran Russell Westbrook, the team’s newly acquired point guard, asked his teammates a rhetorical question. What time, Westbrook wanted to know, did the game start? One of the players, head coach Scott Brooks remembers, shouted, “7 o’clock!” Wrong answer. “No, no, no, no,” Brooks recalls Westbrook saying. “The game starts now.” Underneath his mask, the coach was grinning from ear to ear. “That was my line,” Brooks says. “I wanted to say to Russell, ‘If you’re gonna to use my line, at least put my name on it.’” In a tumultuous, pandemic-shortened season in which the Wizards opened the 2020-21 campaign with a five-game losing streak, had six games postponed due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols in January, and lost starting center Thomas Bryant to a torn ACL,
the team appeared hopeless and has hovered near the bottom of the league’s standings. But it closed out February by winning seven of nine games, including an overtime victory over the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, and remains within reach of
reputation may precede him, but Wizards players say his leadership and relentless intensity have been invaluable. “Don’t tell him I said this, but he has the heart of a lion,” forward-center Moe Wagner said after the Wizards beat the Los Angeles
“...I know that leadership is something I’ve always been able to do, every team that I’ve been on, and I’m going to continue to do that.” the playoffs with slightly more than half of the 72-game season remaining. Brooks and several Wizards players credit the 32-year-old Westbrook, a former NBA MVP, nine-time all-star, and vocal leader who started his career with the Brooks-led Oklahoma City Thunder more than a decade ago, for keeping the team focused even as the losses piled up. Westbrook’s polarizing
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Clippers, 119-117, on March 4. “He’s unbelievable, and I’m very privileged and happy to be his teammate.” Wi z a r d s gua r d -f orwa r d T roy Brown Jr. doesn’t mind when Westbrook yells at him. Actually, he says, he appreciates it. There are times when Brown, playing in his third NBA season, tries to hold himself to the
same level of accountability that Westbrook expects of his teammates, but it quickly becomes draining. Westbrook, on the other hand, never appears to let his energy level drop. “Regardless of the situation, regardless of how many points Russ has, or anything like that, he’s gonna be talking, whether you like it or not,” Brown says. “It’s just very intense, and some people don’t like it as much, but I really think it’s very cool that he does that. Because at the end of the day it’s like you always know he’s locked in ... A lot of guys half-ass the game, like don’t give 110 [percent], so to see him give 110, he is the most paid athlete on this court right now. I feel like that’s really dope: that he holds everybody to a level of accountability, and he raises the play of everybody else.” Brown likens Westbrook’s intensity to what he’s seen from the Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler and from Michael Jordan in the documentary The Last Dance. Brooks sees a lot of similarities between Westbrook and two Hall of Famers he encountered during his playing days. “It’s definitely a combination of Charles Barkley, who I played with, he brought the intensity and the determination to the team,” Brooks says. “And the approach that we do this every night and we get paid lots of money to do this every night. If you need an off day, take it during the summer type of mentality. So I’d say Charles Barkley had that same mentality that Russell has, and also Jason Kidd. Jason Kidd had this real desire to want to get better and want to play with a high IQ on the f loor and to help his teammates play with that level of IQ.” But how much Westbrook’s style of play benefits his teammates has been up for debate. In early December, before the season began, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Westbrook was “very bothered” by the suggestion that he isn’t a good teammate following his trade from the Houston Rockets. When asked how his leadership style has evolved over the years, after the team’s 112110 win over the Denver Nuggets on Feb. 25, Westbrook responded that it’s always been the same. “I think it’s just now, it’s really up to y’all in the media to determine if I’m a good leader or not, to be honest,” he said. “But I’ve been leading the same way since I’ve been in the league. I think now I hear it from other teammates and other teams and shit like that, that allows you guys to be like, ‘Oh, Russ, you’re leading now,’ which it doesn’t mean nothing to me, ’cause I know that leadership is something I’ve always been able to do, every team that I’ve been on, and I’m going to continue to do that.” For Westbrook, leadership goes beyond ju s t t a l k i n g or w h at p eo ple s ee; it ’s revealed when a person is able to stay the same regardless of how things are going. Throughout the season, Westbrook has found ways to connect with his teammates
