Lakers Have To Move Russell Westbrook

 









When the Los Angeles Lakers acquired Russell Westbrook a year ago, I was hoping for the best.

Westbrook is a singular talent. He’s a type that excels at aspects of offence all himself. A player that handles the ball up and down the court. Westbrook averages what the league statisticians call a triple-double.

He averages double figures in points, assists and rebounds. The dominant player that can be a one-man team. If he was in show business, he’d be the writer, director and star of his own production.

The Lakers won a championship in 2020. They were beating the eventual Western Conference champion Phoenix Suns in the playoffs when disaster struck. Their superstar duo, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, went down injured and they lost the series and their season was over.

James isn’t getting any younger, so the Lakers went out and got another future hall-of-famer to give James a break. The three NBA greats got together and agreed to change their way of playing to fit into a system that would benefit the team.

It seemed like a great idea.

Instead, it became an egomaniacal migraine headache.

It all started out fine, but then the singular great Westbrook found it difficult to adjust to a team style of playing. It didn’t help either when the best player at his position was also LeBron James, the best player on the team.

Westbrook was lost on the court. He didn’t know whether to pass or shoot. He had to defer to James when he had always been the focal point.

Last season was a disaster for the Lakers. They were supposed to contend for the championship, but they didn’t make the playoffs.

Now, Russell Westbrook is making more money than anyone on the team and the Lakers have made no secret of wanting to move on without him. No trading partners want anything to do with his salary without the Lakers adding assets to entice them.

Westbrook knows he’s not wanted and now has requested to leave. He has fired the agent that he has had since college because the agent told him the move to the Lakers was going to be a good one.

The Lakers are between a rock and a hard place. This fiasco is going to cost them big.



Image by: Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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