Russell Westbrook had some choice words for his former team as he returned to the Denver Nuggets’ locker room following his Game 7 victory on Saturday. “Picked the wrong person, didn’t they?” he reportedly asked, rhetorically, upon eliminating the Los Angeles Clippers.
Though one answer seems likeliest, it’s not fully clear to whom he is referring. The obvious answer is James Harden, with whom Westbrook played on three separate teams. The Clippers traded for him last season, and he supplanted Westbrook as the team’s starting point guard. Harden scored just seven points in Game 7.
Westbrook also could have been referring to Kris Dunn, whom the Clippers traded Westbrook for last summer. The Nuggets frequently played help defense off of Dunn because they didn’t fear his 3-point shooting.
Perhaps he was referring to coach Ty Lue, as the Clippers frequently picked Westbrook as the Nugget they wouldn’t guard from deep. Westbrook punished them by shooting 42% from 3-point range in the series.
It ultimately doesn’t matter, because the truth of the last several years is that Westbrook would have understandable gripes with far more than three people. The second half of his Hall of Fame career has been, by basically any measure, a mess.
When he reunited with Harden in Houston, it went so poorly offensively that the Rockets had to abandon the center position entirely to try to make it work. He got swept out of the first round in Washington as a No. 8 seed. The Lakers are only now recovering from their disastrous decision to trade for him in 2022. The Clippers, well, Westbrook said it himself, now didn’t he?
Westbrook is an MVP, the first player since Oscar Robertson to average a triple-double, and had he retired at 30, that’s all he would have been remembered for. But legacies for non-champions tend be cruel. Harden, an MVP in his own right, will surely be reminded of that in the wake of his awful Game 7.
James Harden pulls yet another Game 7 Houdini disappearing act as…
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