Russell Westbrook’s move to the Los Angeles Lakers has backfired for all parties involved. Westbrook has seen his reputation as one of the better guards in the league take a hit, while the Lakers are stuck with a player who just does not fit well alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis. The criticism of Russ was reaching ridiculous levels at times this season and he recently got some support from an unlikely source.
Iman Shumpert was on Vlad TV and he discussed a variety of topics during the interview including Luka Doncic being compared to LeBron. He then spoke about the struggles that the Lakers had this year and Westbrook’s perceived role in it.
“Russell Westbrook’s contract is not his role on the Lakers and that’s what everybody got f****d up. Before Russell Westbrook came over there we knew this is a LeBron AD situation. That’s how this works, everything Russ do is cake.”
“Why did everybody act like Russ wasn’t gonna have like a period of time where he gotta get his rhythm with new guys. Like he don’t got the ball 80% of the time no more. Everything changed and everybody was like its Russ fault, he’s getting $40 million. It’s like bro he didn’t throw himself into this to get 20% touches and now he gotta be super efficient.”
“The coach gotta give me $44 million ball in my hand time…. I’m not his agent, they ain’t paying me nothing…. but if you want $44 million Russ then give him the ball and run everything for Russ then and make Bron stand in the corner.”
Shumpert makes the point that people look at Westbrook’s contract and expect more from him but he just can’t do it when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands as often as he once did. The offense flows through LeBron and AD, with Russ being the third option and there’s only so much he can do. His numbers were always going to go down and now people focus on his mistakes as the rest of his stats aren’t as gaudy as they once were.
He also spoke about how Westbrook’s mistakes seemed to get highlighted this season and that the ones he made are regularly done by other NBA players too. Shumpert does make a lot of good points here and the best move for all parties in this situation seems to be to break it off but it doesn’t seem like there is an exit route in place for Russ at this point.
