Become a delight to your enemies

The psychological and league-wide impact of Russell Westbrook, going strong.

Yes, grins the devil on my shoulder. Not needing much more than an inkling to turn its focus his way, but now paying heady attention to the rapt scrutiny most everyone is giving his stats since early November.

It leers at his one arm dunk to close a half against the Thunder, tipped from a deflection at the other end and then racing, reaching — hand of god, creation of Game. It snickers at the moments defenders leave him out at the fringes all alone, not bothering to push their legs the extra few steps to guard him at the elbow, so instead he squares up, pantomimes a shot, then takes it, makes it.

My devil smirks all the times Nikola Jokic plucks the ball from its seconds-before assured trajectory on a passing arc then turns to take it himself down the floor in transition, looks around, looking for help and no one is there until, yes, broken from the opposition’s tangle he comes careening, fifth horseman of the apocalypse bearing down with a grin. You need speed? This horseman asks over his shoulder, already gone. It’s what I’m made for. No idea the colour of the horse, gone too fast.

He leaps backwards to catch an alley-oop under the basket, has time enough to clock the baseline whizzing by below his airborne feet and swings the ball back, hard, to Jamal Murray, planted and safely inbound over 20 feet away. He lets the ball roll all the way to centre court, eight long seconds, daring a steal, scoops it up as a defender — sick of this — finally comes, and goes jettisoning to the basket in five low, zinging strides.

He toys, he taunts, sends a bounce pass between Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell who watch it roll by with mild fascination like a tumbleweed. My devil puffs pleased smoke from its nose.

He is so hard-pressed to stop moving that he waits, bent at the waist, arms out, body practically vibrating with the strain it takes to keep still as he watches Murray across the court pass to Jokic who misses the shot but then, he’s already there, flying in from the top of the key to tap the ball in. And once, he’s already halfway down the floor ahead of his teammates, on a fastbreak that never materializes (oh).

I’d look to the angel on my other shoulder but it’s leaning forward, mouthing along the words BOOM, BITCH that he hollers up at the crowd after taking and making what is the perfect three-pointer — unhurried, long arc, cementing a 26-point lead against the franchise that most recently clipped his wings.

Yes, the devil and angel purr in unison, write about Russell Westbrook.

Here’s a proposition most don’t have the stomach for: become a delight to your enemies.¹

Become so well-hated that your every move, be them proud or fumbling, straightforward or with trepidation, is met with derision. Met with any number of counters for the veracity of a move if it would otherwise be deigned good, even fine, for anyone else, and met with glee when the move proves to be a bad one.

To be clear, the proposition isn’t the same as the capitalistic mantra of our time, to become so successful that people hate you. It’s that your failures — anticipated and applauded — are so frequent in the eyes of those rooting against that your name brings levity, smiling succour. A name as social shorthand.

This season, like most seasons, I hope for the impossible, that Russell Westbrook has reached the apex of the public derision for him. I’m the first to admit it’s a hatred I can’t, could never, get my head around, but nonetheless I’ve tried to better grasp its slippery parameters.

Once, it was based upon movement. Westbrook switched teams too much. Upended for greener pastures. Except, that isn’t how most trades work and wasn’t how any of his did. The greatest autonomy Westbrook’s ever had was in Oklahoma City, and he was jettisoned out like James Harden before him, after Kevin Durant had used his leverage to flee to greener, specifically golden, prospects. After that, Westbrook’s salary hobbled him, hung round his neck like a squalling albatross granted, the birds of that particularly vengeful feather liked to see it there, very much.

It’s been his shooting (too much, too often), his selfishness (tied back to his shooting), both tethered to a BCE in the NBA’s history where stars were meant to be singular, to extort all the gravity they could. It’s been his unwillingness to change, and then it was that he did change, but either at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.

The point is, when your identity becomes symbolic for collapse, there will always be a reason, a sign, a pattern, pointing to why your next crash is imminent.

---

In a postgame two weeks ago, Westbrook was asked whether there were regular season games that felt like they meant a little more than normal. The Nuggets had just, very narrowly and in large part by his own hand, beat the booming Thunder.

“Shit, every night for me, to be honest,” he said, then laughed with a force of recognition strong enough for the stat sheet in front of him to go fluttering up from the table.

I humbly say that because man, I’ve been in the league a while and been hurt and been on the side and watching, and sometimes you take the Tuesday night, the Wednesday night game for granted. For me, I never take any opportunity or chance to get on the floor for granted.

Westbrook’s in his 17th season. He was drafted at 20-years-old and just turned 36. We have a very severe grasp of age in the NBA, basically that anything after 28 topples off a cliff into “old”, but we don’t give much thought to vastness of minutes in somebody’s life that make up a season, let alone 17 of them.

Westbrook’s averaged 33.5 minutes a game, per season, across his career. The only major injury he’s had was a meniscus tear in 2013, when Patrick Beverly collided with him in an attempt to steal the ball. That season, Westbrook still finished with 46 games. He’s played 1177 games and counting.

That time, when you really think about it, is remarkable. His motor — physical and psychological — astounding. I don’t just mean it’s remarkable for Westbrook — the average NBA career is still about five years long, so anything beyond constitutes out of the ordinary. But for Westbrook to still feel that the time of a game, in its basic granularity, means more, well the vision that manifests is of a person hounding down time instead of the other way around.

No matter how or what you feel about Russell Westbrook, you’d be hard-pressed to watch one of his 60,000 some-odd minutes spent on the floor and admit that isn’t, also, the way he plays basketball.

---

In an environment that thrives on assists (that already led the league in them before a man who leads the league in them arrived), needs desperately a perennial and high-voltage energy generator, and whose own singular yet unconventional star has taken a real shine to him, can Denver be the last stop for Westbrook?

I won’t answer it. I have my obvious — hopefully by now, to you — hopes, but the question gets posed like Westbrook is still the one deciding, and feigned as good faith each time it gets asked. As if we’ve suddenly and truly this time jettisoned from the world where two weeks ago stories called for a “merciful end” to the Westbrook era.

At this point the question can never be asked outside of its own universe-collapsing gravity. It presupposes failure. For most, Westbrook’s still the intoxicating, walking equivalent of the Big Crunch theory.

To keep to a theme of cosmology — why not — and a line that offers both an elegant out and perhaps the simplest framing of someone as charged and transcendent as Westbrook, here’s a genius of introspection and intimacy in her own right, Clarice Lispector: “There were cosmic streaks that substituted for understanding.”

1. Thank you, Sara Peters