Russell Westbruck had a few words of choice for his former team when he returned to Denver Nuggetts locker room after winning the 7th game 7 on Saturday. “The wrong person chose, isn’t it?” According to reports, he rhetorically asked, after eliminating the moos -angelic clippers.
Although one answer seems the most likely, it is not entirely clear to whom he refers. The obvious answer is James Harden, with whom Westbrook played in three separate teams. Clippers traded at him last season, and he replaced Westbruck as the starting point of the team. Harden scored only seven points in the game 7.
Westbrook could also refer to Chris Danna, whom Clippers exchanged Westbrook for the last summer. Nuggets often played in defense from Danna because they were not afraid of his shooting of 3 points.
Perhaps he had in mind coach Tai Liu, since Clippers often chose Westbruck as a nugget, whom they will not protect from deep. Westbrook punished them, shooting at 42% of the range of 3 points in the series.
In the end, this does not matter, because the truth of the last few years is that Westbrook would have understandable measures with much more than three people. The second half of his career of the Hall of Glory was mainly any measure, disorder.
When he reunited with Harden in Houston, he became so poorly offensive that the missiles had to completely abandon the central position to try to force her to work. He left the first round in Washington as seeds No. 8. Lakers are only now restored after his catastrophic decision to trade on him in 2022. Clippers, well, Westbrook said it himself, right?
Westbrook-MVP, the first player since Oscar Robertson, who is the average triple double, and if he resigned at the age of 30, this is all that he was remembered for. But the legacy for not champions is usually cruel. Harden, MVP on its own, will surely remind this after his terrible game 7.
James Harden pulls out another game disappeared in the game 7, as the clippers is eliminated by nuggets
Brad Botkin
Westbruck’s struggle in order to adapt to the new team determined his entire career after and until recently, it seemed, it was destined to spoil the historical heritage. If Harden’s career could be so cruel in a few terrible games on the liquidation, what hope of Westbruck escaped a very ugly, very dirty ending of his career?
Probably not so much, especially since he kept his fair share of guilt for this. He spent years, starting from the necessary changes in his game. He could always cause greater protection for big plays or in the right matches, but his efforts based on possession due to the best were left to be desired. He always turned the ball too much and occupied too many middle -class jumpers. He did not hug the angle 3 until he became a clipper, and he did not begin to make it consistently before this season.
In fact, it would be easy to attribute Westbruck’s success as a nugget with this specific shot. He made seven large in the Clipper series, including the one that I sent the game 1 in overtime. He led the nuggets, hitting 45 of them this season. This is almost half at any time in any season, which he has since left Thunder (his previous maximum in this interval was 23), and this is of great importance for describing his failure with these other teams. As soon as Westbrook left the thunder, he had to play more from the ball. He never felt comfortable with this as an arrow or as mainly something else.
Until he arrived in Denver.
Whether Nikola Yokich’s brilliance were made by him, the pressure accumulated due to many years of disappointment in other places, or simply with good old-fashioned growth, Westbrook made the subtle changes necessary for prosperity as a role player. This season, he scored 126 points as a cutter, for the first time he crossed triples since 2012, despite the fact that he played the second very first minutes of his career in a season not related to the incorrect, pandemic or locaurus. He published the second largest level of restoration of the onset of his career after and after. Finally, he began to become a player outside the ball who needed his teams.
Some of these changes began with clipper. It was then that he again began to bounce off the offensive, and when he turned a bunch of his bad jumpers of the middle class in angle 3. But partly that made the partnership in the Denver, was that the nuggets never tried to bury the old I Westbrook – they simply tried to force him to accept new things. Clippers will never be able to really let Westbruck play their typical chaotic basketball brand in the team with Harden and Kavkhi Leonard, knocking on the rock, absorbing possession and watches.
But the nuggets really needed the injection of chaos. Their bench was a disorder throughout the Jokich era partly because no backup can repeat its unique play style. Westbrook, obviously, is not, but he is a necessity, bringing his personality to the floor. Yes, this often means turnover and careless violation, but the nuggets deftly realized that they still lose the games on the bench. Westbrook can lose a little of them, but a high -ranking way he plays will win them as much.
He even admitted that after the game 7.
“I think this is my ability to be the power of nature on the floor, so that, no matter how it looks. It can be a turn, it can be a missed shot, it can be a theft, it can be a Dank, it can be three missed, it can be done three, ”he said. “It can be all this, so just take it the way it happens, and no matter what happens, you go with it.”
This energy, even if it could choose nuggets along the bad paths as easily as good, has become a true asset for Denver.
And Yokich learned to accept this on his best nights. When Bad Westbrook turned out to be problematic, the nuggets simply pulled it out. When a good version sang him, nuggets fell in. They allowed him to manage his game with two people with Jokich at critical moments and remain more involved in the game, which he could next to Harden or Lebron James. It may have been required by the most inclusive teammate of the NBA, but Denver finally found the right balance between the player, who was always Westbrook, and those who everyone wanted him to become.
That’s why they are moving now. Westbrook had its own stake in shaking moments throughout the series, but healed badly. The nuggets would not have beaten the clippers without it.
If you need evidence of this, look no further than another of his former teams, Lakers, which have just lost a playoff series, in which Jay Jay used the same line of five people for the entire second half of one game. Denver spent the past few years, approaching the same. You cannot win in the postson with five players. Westbrook gave them the sixth, and he gave them to them almost for nothing.
This is a key difference here. The disadvantages of Westbruck were insolvent under the maximum contract. The awards outweigh the risks for a minimum, and he probably never does more than it again. Now he is at another stage of his career, at the age of 36 and firmly in the reserve. He saw how much everything could go in the wrong team. Why ever leave the right one?
I hope he does not. The series and season of Westbruck with nuggets should complete the history of this part of his career. He will never unravel the bad moments from the good, but before he became a nugget, there was simply no good enough to maintain his reputation after the teacher.
If his career ended a year or two ago, a stable memories of the Great for all the time would be how much it all ended. He certainly knows about it well. He heard the chants of the West Circus. He, of course, knows what they thought Clippers about him, because he said the same amount after the game. Correctly or wrong, their feelings corresponded to more consensus.
Therefore, this nugget serves as an important reminder of how it can be when things are going correctly. He is mercury, he is inconsistent, and he has meaningful weaknesses, but he has always been much more than the past few years have expected.
In Denver, he had the opportunity to remind this basketball world, and in this series he ran with him.
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