MUST READ: 2018 Offseason: Why Westbrook Is Criminally Underrated
Russell Westbrook sometimes struggles with taking too many threes, being turnover prone, inefficiency, playing out of control, shooting too much, and reckless defense. He’s still criticized far more than he deserves. When Russell played with Kevin Durant and they didn’t win, Westbrook got the blame basically every time because he is a “ball hog who didn’t let Kevin shoot enough”. Yet Durant, in 8 seasons alongside Russ, somehow won 4 scoring titles (3 if you don’t count the year when Russell played 46/82 games) and led the Thunder in points per game every season but the one he played about 33% of his team’s contests. Westbrook led OKC in field goal attempts per game once in the 6 years he or KD didn’t miss a significant number of contests. So it doesn’t make sense why the “poor Kevin had to endure 8 seasons with Russ” claim is still used. They went to a finals, 4 conference finals, lost in the first round once and missed the playoffs twice (one of those times was when Durant played ab...