Is Russell Westbrook as bad as people say?

Was his season in L.A. really the worst of his career?

Six days ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that Russell Westbrook is selling his $30 million L.A. mansion. A couple days ago, the Los Angeles Lakers signed point-guard Dennis Schroder to return to the squad he formerly turned down a massive extension too. More than this though, the Lakers added Lonnie Walker IV and Patrick Beverley this offseason as well. Russell Westbrook must now share playing-time with 5 other guards, once Austin Reaves and Kendrick Nunn are taken into account; and with no trade in sight, it is up to freshman head coach Darvin Ham to allocate minutes. As many casual and hardcore NBA enthusiasts now, there was a pressing “Westbrick” rhetoric that permeated his entire first year with the Lakers. The agenda of the stat-padding-triple-double-machine Russell Westbrook is now a thing of the past, and there are genuinely some who believe the former MVP should be out of the league. So, this begs the question; how poor did Russell Westbrook play in the 2021–2022 season?

Scoring Efficiency

It’s hard to believe, but in terms of objective shooting efficiency, this was not the worst season of Russell Westbrook’s career. In fact, Westbrook’s ‘21-’22 true shooting percentage of 51.2% sits ahead of 4 of his other seasons. Two of these seasons include his last year with the Oklahoma City Thunder, as well as his sole season with the Washington Wizards. In context though, Westbrook was still relatively relied upon as a leader of each of these squads, as both of these campaigns found Westbrook associated with a usage rate of around 3% higher than his time in L.A. The other two seasons are his first two; and in these seasons, he was assigned a usage rate of about 1.5% less each than the ‘21-’22 season. So, it is still arguable that in relation to his role on a team, this could be considered his worst shooting efficiency campaign, as he was forced to create more offense in the later examples, while seemingly still adjusting to the professional level in the earlier ones.

In terms of actual shooting, Russell Westbrook’s perimeter attempts hit the mark at a comparable total rate to his prior 3 seasons. That being said, these years have Westbrook ranked below the 15th percentile for three-point accuracy in relativity to his own position. Furthermore, Basketball Index ranks Westbrook’s general ability to hit from the perimeter at a demoralizing 0 percentile. This might seem harsh, but given the degree of difficulty of his three-pointers (he is left open almost 38% of the time), Westbrook should not be meddling below the 30% mark. Even though the Los Angeles point-guard is abysmal at shooting at most areas around the perimeter, he actually hit a career-high rate of efficiency for corner-threes, cashing in on 44% of his attempted chances; so at least there’s that.

Westbrook is still a force when charging the basket, as he ranked in the 91st percentile last season for shots near the rim per 75 possessions; but last season, he capitalized on these opportunities at the lowest rate of his career since his ‘16-’17 MVP season, of which he can be excused for basically carrying the entirety of OKC on his back. For how often Westbrook still gets to the rack, he should not have seen a year-to-year 6% decrease in accuracy for shots within 4 feet in ‘21-’22. Westbrook also attempted a higher percentage of mid-range shots than any season of his career, aside from his time in Washington, but shot 7.7% less efficiently than during his time with the Wizards. Westbrook’s athleticism will always enable the guard to create his own shots, but his inefficiency indicates that it’d be almost impossible to slide him down to the 2, or for him to be offensively impactful without being ball-dominant.

Playmaking

Russell Westbrook’s 7.1 APG in the ‘21-’22 season is reminiscent of his 7 APG that he produced when he had to share the stage with James Harden in Houston. It obviously makes sense that Westbrook’s base playmaking stats would see a substantial decrease once he had to share ball-handling duties with LeBron James, but that isn’t the issue. The problem is that Russell Westbrook averages an eye-watering (as in sad-crying) assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.87. This means that for every less than 2 assists that Westbrook successfully executes, he also will probably be responsible for an error. This ratio is so inefficient that it does not even place him in the top 100 for the statistic. As horrendous as this may sound though, his ability to directly, and indirectly, create scoring opportunities is still elite for what it is. Due to Westbrook’s predictable tendency to attack the paint, defenders often crash the lower-color-blocking, subsequently opening up about 8.4 scoring chances per 100 possessions for teammates. Furthermore, Westbrook ranks in the 96th percentile for high-value assists per 75 possessions, which takes basically any shot that isn’t mid-range into account. Westbrook has become sloppy with his general offensive orchestration, but his playmaking production has stayed relatively the same.

Defense/Rebounding

The recklessness that has resulted in unwarranted turnovers for Westbrook has also somewhat translated to his defense. Coinciding with Westbrook’s career-low SPG output, his steal percentage (how often he steals the ball per 100 possessions) has dropped to a career-worst 1.2%, placing him in the 16th percentile for the statistic within his position. Westbrook has also been often overly-eager in pressuring his matchups, as depicted by his 3.4% foul rate, tied for the second-highest in his career. These wouldn’t be too alarming if Basketball Index didn’t point out that the difficulty of his matchups decreased substantially from his year in Washington to now.

Westbrook’s ability to claim offensive misses has stayed true to form, but his defensive rebounding ability has seemingly diminished to a considerable degree. Again, this makes sense when you consider that the same decrease occurred during his time in Houston, but it is still another facet of his game that has become more and more transparent.

Overall Team Impact

To call Russell Westbrook a team-cancer on a squad as dysfunctional as the Los Angeles Lakers is entirely undeserved. His individual performances have surely faltered severely, but the Lakers perform at around the same efficiency, whether or not the former MVP is on the floor. An interesting side-note is that the Lakers’ most productive 5-man lineup throughout the entire year consisted of Anthony Davis, Avery Bradley, Carmelo Anthony, Malik Monk and you guessed it, Russell Westbrook. This unit outscored opponents by an average of 13 points per 100 possessions when sharing time together, albeit in a limited sample size of just over 68 minutes. The most effective 4-man lineup also included Westbrook, in addition to LeBron James, Stanley Johnson and Malik Monk, a group that were featured together for a substantial 223+ minutes of game-time, where they outscored opponents by an average of 7.8 points per 100 possessions. Although, the fact that Westbrook was the Lakers’ only true playmaking point-guard is probably a contributor to his influence on pretty much every lineup listed on Basketball Reference’s top Lakers groupings of the past season. Nonetheless, with no other facilitating option in Los Angeles’ backcourt depth, Darvin Ham should be hard-pressed to find a true reason to bench Westbrook. It is true that Westbrook’s inefficiencies certainly highlight that he isn’t the Lakers’ answer at the 1, but the scarcity of similar archetypes leaves L.A. in a tricky situation that might find them reverting back to the former MVP.