Can someone fill the most casual fan in with what happened with Westbrook? I’ve become aware of how much heat this guy is taking.
I'll try and be brief
Russ originally signed a super max with the thunder on the heels of his mvp triple double seasons. However, in the wake of them trading PG for SGA and all of our (the Clippers) picks for the foreseeable future, the thunder realized that Melo was kind of washed and not old Melo. After a year of russ pushing the Boulder up the hill and not being able to break out of the first round, they traded him to the rockets for Chris Paul in daryl moreys high stakes game to ruin basketball with James harden.
Russ was still playing at a high level but they could not break through the ceiling to reach the finals, so russ was traded to the wizards in another bid to build around harden. Russ had a surprising bounce back season with the wizards and LeBron got his gm cap on and demanded that the Lakers mortgage their future and role players for russ's monstrous 45 mil a year contract.
Now people had long been speculating that based on russ' physical style of play and his failure to improve his shooting efficiency, that this contract was going to become one of the worst in basketball. As a result, teams had been playing hot potato with him to see who would be left holding the bag when his play began to decline.
That team happened to be this current Lakers team who jettisoned the shooters who spaced the floor to make LeBron and Anthony Davis's lives easier and helped them win a championship as well as not prioritizing players like Caruso or overvaluing the wrong players (refusing to include talen Horton Tucker in trade talks with SAC for Buddy Hield). It all combined to create this mess of a team. With Davis sidelined with yet another injury, it fell to russ, LeBron and Melo to try and carry the team in his absence. Unfortunately, all three of them have begun to show the effects of father time in their declining games as well as all three of them not giving a fuck about defense outside of flashy chase down blocks or risky steal attempts that lead to blown assignments more than deflections.
Now that LeBron is pissed and it's clear that this team is garbagé, the media has pointed the biggest finger at russ for his inefficient shooting, turnovers and horrendous defense.
to make matters worse, Russ; a player INFAMOUS for talking mad shit on the court and for rocking the baby after yamming it on other players, has taken extreme umbrage with his new moniker "westbrick" for his consistently off target jump shot and has been battling with fans and other players who are more than happy to pile on him after years of him doing the same.
Furthermore, Russell played at ucla and is himself from Los Angeles, making what he surely hoped was a triumphant homecoming in a bid to win the Lakers another championship, instead another layer of salt in the festering wound that is this current Lakers season
I know i completely failed in my directive to make it brief, but i thought it best to give the necessary context for
why this season is SO disastrous
Topic: NBA Thread (Read 371081 times)