Russell Westbrook has never been known to have the best of relations with the media during his time in the NBA. His attitude towards them has always been quite disrespectful, and you could argue that a lot of times, the media personnel dig their own graves with some pointless and cliched questions.
Asking Westbrook anything remotely like that can end up quite badly for a reporter, especially after a loss, and that’s just what happened back in 2013. After the Thunder lost 109-94 to the Jazz on 13th February, a reporter asked one of those cliched questions, “Did you guys lose this game, or did the Jazz win this one?”. Needless to say, Westbrook was not a fan of the question and had a priceless reaction to it.
“What!? Bro, what are you talking about, man? I’m out, man.”
It is one of the more hilarious responses to come from Russ, and while a lot of players would have given a generic response to that, he was never going to even entertain it. That is not to say the question wasn’t fair, though, as OKC had turned it over 20 times with Westbrook accounting for 7 of those (where have we seen that before?), which played a big role in Utah winning that one.
These kinds of reactions have always been the norm for Russ, which is why a lot of reporters tend to not “poke the bear”, as they say, during his press conferences, but that’s not been the case in Los Angeles. He has gotten into it with reporters on numerous occasions, and there was one heated exchange after which he left the press conference. He has had a very rough time with the media in LA and fortunately for him, it looks like his time there might be coming to an end.
His Lakers stint has been a disaster for all the parties involved and they want to give him up at this point. A fresh start with a new team might just get him going again, but the media there needs to make sure they don’t get caught asking him something like this reporter did back then.
