Russell Westbrook deserves his roses whether you love him or hate him

Russell Westbrook is a true enigma

Personally speaking, I had always seesawed with the Russell Westbrook dynamic. While his bull-in-a-china-shop excitement and inextinguishable fire were surely unmatched, his inability to take a backseat and develop his inefficiencies were equally so. As time went on—and as I became a

bigger nerd

slightly more analytically-cognizant viewer of the game—Westbrook pushed me and many others away with each passing season. Despite the explosiveness he continued to play with, Russ’s unwatchability reached its summit during his previous two seasons, thus turning any pre-existing Russell Westbrook stock into a seemingly sunken capital loss. The mighty had fallen, and the pit was Grand Canyon deep.

But upon some reflection following his magnum opus of accomplishments—his impossible passing of Oscar Robertson for the most triple-doubles in NBA history (182)—I have no problem admitting that I was wrong about Russ. Truthfully, a lot of us were. This erroneousness, however, had little to do with Westbrook feeling like he was falling off a cliff. He was. His last season in Oklahoma City and lone season in Houston were enough to make that claim both undeniable and irrefutable. But regarding how we actively perceive Russell Westbrook and all that he does on a basketball court, our judgment could not be more skewed.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, in today’s era of stats beyond stats, hoity-toity, “I’m right, you’re wrong” attitudes, and popular Twitter users who tear down any and all things cool, it has become increasingly easy to place the boring-but-solid on a pedestal while simultaneously tearing down the remarkable-but-chaotic in the process. For the analytically-driven skeptics of the game, gone are the days of feeling nothing but awe when a player pulls off an incredible feat. Just ask notorious party-pooper, Nate Duncan, how he felt after Anthony Edwards crucified Yuta Watanabe with the indisputable dunk of the year.

In a round-about way, it almost seems as though these unwritten, idiotic “rules” began with Russell Westbrook. Despite his propensity to wow us, Westbrook quickly became the greatest casualty of this new, hyper-analytical perspective of the game. Whether or not this categorical lumping is the fault of his own lacks relevance to the argument, but make no mistake: Russ has still received more heat for being historically significant than almost anyone this past decade.

Are his statistics, at times, a tad befuddling? Absolutely. As previously mentioned, from an advanced perspective, sticklers certainly have a case to make in their Russ-revolved arguments. After all, judging players solely on face-value stats like points, rebounds, and assists—the individual statistics Westbrook seems to care about above all else—would be one of the most limiting things we could do. And despite what his triple-doubles, matchup stats, and gaudy clutch numbers suggest, both the eye-test and the numbers test opposingly tell us that Westbrook is neither the most efficient shooter (44/32/65 splits), nor the best defender, nor the smartest decision-maker down the stretch.