Russell Westbrook spoke after the Denver Nuggets‘ 116-110 win over the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night. He noted that while a large portion of fans are only familiar with the Nuggets because of their performance on nationally televised games, people aren’t familiar with how well they have been playing and only began criticizing them once they lost a high-profile game to the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Obviously some people only watch the [national] TV games, so they watched the Boston game, and everybody has a comment. But throughout the year, consistently, I didn’t hear any of this talk before. Now all of a sudden it’s like, oh, we lose to the Lakers… everybody’s losing their mind.
“And personally, internally, we don’t panic. Play the right way… Get stops. Run in transition. Because we’re the best transition team in the league. So when we get stops, you can’t load up [on Jokic] then. So our defense has gotta help our offense.”
Westbrook clearly feels that NBA fans, especially those who are critical of how the Nuggets are playing, aren’t paying close attention to them. However, Westbrook has made a career of struggling to accept criticism well, and so his comments must be taken with a pinch of salt.
While the Nuggets are by no means in a position where they need to be panicking, sitting third in a Western Conference with a 40-22 record, their run this season has shown that they are no longer the dominant, championship-level team they were this time last year. The slow exodus of key players like Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope since winning the title in 2023 has proven to be devastating.
The Nuggets haven’t been able to replace the output and production that the two stars provided to them even after all this time. Nikola Jokic continues to play incredible basketball, as he averages 28.8 points, 12.8 rebounds, 10.4 assists, 1.8 steals, and 0.6 blocks per game while shooting 57.6% from the field, 43.9% from beyond the arc, and 81.9% from the free-throw line.
But he cannot carry this team to the NBA championship, and it is unfair of the Nuggets and NBA fans to expect him to do that, especially considering what he has been doing for the Nuggets over the last few years. Jokic needs help, and it is up to the rest of the Nuggets players to step up and deliver.
Westbrook, for a large part of the season, was one of the players who was delivering at a high level, even forming a strong partnership with Nikola Jokic. But his injury sidelined him, losing a lot of the momentum he had built up. Most recently, Westbrook’s worst instincts have begun to resurface as he took a bad shot in a game, something that frustrated Jokic and Jamal Murray.
The Nuggets don’t need to make up a lot of ground. But it would be best if they stopped doing hard work for themselves and began performing at a high level again.
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