National Basketball Association

Look out, NBA — Russell Westbrook is working his magic

Published May. 21, 2021 8:15 p.m. ET

By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

Somehow, the NBA found itself caught up in the sheer weight of numbers this season, which is how the story of what Russell Westbrook accomplished in this campaign has become lost in the detail.

Amid all the stats, shadowed by the breaking of records, is a scarcely believable tale of revival and resilience that was finally completed Thursday.

The Washington Wizards' season isn’t finished, but when Westbrook put the team on his shoulders one more time to clinch the eighth and final spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs, it was the last step in a journey that started with the status of "team going downhill" and has morphed into "team to take seriously."

Westbrook has put together a wonder of a season. It was a tour de force of measurable productivity. He averaged 22.2 points, 11.7 assists and 11.5 rebounds. Unsurprisingly, given those tallies, he compiled triple-doubles at an absurd rate.

Only four men recorded double-digit triple-doubles this season. The other three, Nikola Jokic, James Harden and Luka Doncic, combined for 39. Westbrook had 38 and now has more – 184 – than any other player in NBA history, having surpassed Oscar Robertson on May 10.

But while glossy data and highlight-reel flash keep the NBA’s social media presence burgeoning, the ultimate goal is to win games, right? That’s something the Wizards weren’t very good at as recently as April 7, by which time a season that began 3-12 had groaned its way to 17-32.

From such situations, things usually don’t go too well. Six weeks ago, various statistical models gave the Wizards a less than 1% chance of making the playoffs. From an identical position, the Cleveland Cavaliers slid to a season-ending 22-50 record.

Washington, instead, became one of the hottest teams in the league.

"We had to figure ourselves out," Westbrook told reporters. "Look at ourselves in the mirror, starting with myself."

There are conflicting tales from the Washington locker room as to when Westbrook stood up one day and decided that enough was enough, but it was around that time. He told the team he didn’t care what the standings said and what had happened to that point. He told them they had to find a way to knuckle up. As improbable as it seemed, they had to get into the postseason, something the franchise hadn’t done since 2018.

It was a closed-door discussion, but if it had been in the public eye, there would have been a degree of skepticism. Westbrook’s true value has been called into question in recent years, and the way things failed to work out in his single season with the Houston Rockets seemed to indicate a downward drift.

When he was traded for John Wall, it looked like a move that would do little for either club. The Rockets did indeed implode. Washington, after that rocky start, most certainly didn’t.

A bold 17-6 run — featuring Westbrook’s nightly shine, Bradley Beal’s indomitable scoring and the emergence of Japanese power forward Rui Hachimura — was one of the main factors in getting the Wizards to that No. 8 spot.

Westbrook was frustrated with himself for his performance in the loss to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Play-In Tournament opener, but he redeemed himself in Thursday’s blowout victory over the Indiana Pacers.

The Wizards are now set to face the top-seeded Philadelphia 76ers, a series in which they will be firm outsiders. The 76ers are seven-point favorites to win Game 1 on Sunday. The Wizards are a whopping +15000 to win the title, per FOX Bet, the second-longest odds of any team in the field.

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However, head coach Scott Brooks insisted that his players continue to carry Westbrook’s impassioned message with them.

"[It was] like, ‘You guys better be ready for what is about to take place,’" Brooks said. "And it turned around."

Now, the Wizards are finally starting to get noticed. Not as a sideshow to Westbrook’s stat-crunching, which this season included games of 28-13-21, 37-11-11 and 35-14-21, but as a squad to be reckoned with.

"If Russ plays the way he did last night, the Wizards will be a handful for anybody," FOX Sports' Skip Bayless said on "Undisputed."

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Westbrook isn't doing anything so different. He still doesn’t sleep much, five or six hours a night. He still wears intriguingly creative pregame outfits. But he has finally found the right fit, and the type of thing he brings sits just right.

The journey of this season, the wildness of the turnaround and the surge of confidence that pervades might be over soon because the 76ers are genuine title contenders stacked with difference-makers.

But the Wizards have been wrongly written off before, and they are in a current streak of form that is as good as anyone’s. We just didn’t fully notice it because of all those numbers.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.