Russell Westbrook Under More Pressure Than Ever Without Kevin Durant
For the Oklahoma City Thunder, it's all about Russell Westbrook.
No really, it is.
Without Kevin Durant in the lineup as he returns from his Jones fracture, the focus is entirely on the team's dynamic point guard, a player who often serves as a lightning rod even when he's playing second fiddle to Durant's first-chair violin. Of course, that's just compounded by the other injuries the Thunder are working through, as the list seems to drag on and on, growing longer by the day.
Reggie Jackson had to be helped off the practice floor by his teammates just prior to the start of the season, suffering a right ankle injury that put him on crutches and leaves him questionable for the first game of the campaign. Jeremy Lamb's back is hurt, while Andre Roberson has a balky ankle that he may have to fight through due to the dearth of options on the wings.
Beyond that, Anthony Morrow's sprained MCL will keep him out for at least a month, Perry Jones III is having some trouble with his knee, and Mitch McGary fractured his foot during the preseason and will miss a significant portion of his rookie year.
So again, it's all about Westbrook now. More so than ever before, it has to be.
There's Always Pressure
Westbrook has basically never played without a spotlight focused firmly on his play. He's one of those players who's constantly being scrutinized and put under the microscope, allowing fans and analysts to try to determine whether the positive production outweighs the negative.
Everything he does gets analyzed and overanalyzed, whether it's a breakout performance that makes it seem once more as though he's elevating up toward the top of the point guard hierarchy or a lackluster shooting performance that might prevent the Thunder from racking up yet another win. Some players are just inherently controversial, and this floor general's playing style takes that to another level.
We've all heard the many arguments that center around Westbrook. For example, despite the simple fact that he suits up at the 1 for the Thunder, some question whether he's really a point guard.
He's a natural shooting guard who's forced into playing the point. He can't be one of the league's best point guards because he's really a 2-guard. He's entirely overrated because he focuses on his own scoring and doesn't play like a pure point guard. He'd be so much better if he didn't shoot as much.
And heaven forbid he makes a crucial error late in a game or throws up a brickfest during any given night. If that happens, the world plays Chicken Little, and the performance is treated as though it's causing the sky to fall. It gives fodder to the inane arguments that his penchant for shooting mid-range pull-ups and jumpers early in the shot clock prevent him from being a high-quality basketball player.
He's the one who inspires Magic Johnson to claim during the broadcast of an NBA Finals game, per the Orlando Sentinel, "I was very disappointed in Russell Westbrook. That was the worst point guard in a championship finals I've ever seen."
But Durant provided a rebuttal of his own during those 2012 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, as relayed by Doug Smith of the Toronto Star: "It's not deserving at all because without him we wouldn't be here at this point and people don’t recognize that. Everybody thinks he should be a traditional point guard like John Stockton...there's a lot of people that cannot be like Russ. We need him to play the way he plays."
The way he plays has tended to work out nicely for the Thunder more often than not, but it's still failed to change the overall perception. Years later, here's Charles Barkley taking a stance on Westbrook's shot-happy ways:
When Durant lit the world on fire and carried OKC in Westbrook's absence, it led to notable NBA writers like Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry asking whether the team was better with Jackson, not the typical starter, playing alongside the future MVP.
Basically, if you look up "lightning rod" in the unofficial NBA dictionary, you'll see Westbrook's face staring right back at you. He's never been able to avoid the pressure, simply because everything he does is analyzed until those talking about him are blue in the face. He's a naturally controversial player, one who creates endless arguments that will never, ever allow for either side to budge.
But even with all that history, he's never been thrust into a situation quite like this one.
High Expectations
The proverbial pressure cooker has always had the dial turned up to 11 for Westbrook, but now the world is finding a way to bump it up to about 15.
Durant is gone for the time being, letting his foot heal and showing no indication that he's going to beat the expected timetable of four-to-six weeks. The rest of the depth chart has been decimated, with players going down left and right...and up and down, apparently. And it's not as though the expectations are that much lower for the Thunder.
"Preseason picks for ESPN The Magazine were due a couple of days before Kevin Durant's foot injury surfaced. I had OKC winning the West if fully healthy," wrote ESPN.com's Marc Stein during his power rankings just prior to the start of the season. "Now? After an injury-riddled October, I might still say the same if you could assure me KD will miss only a month. But who could possibly say that with certainty?"
Durant may be missing, but the Thunder are still expected to stay in the thick of the race for a top seed in the brutally difficult Western Conference. And this is a conference in which just a few games can be the difference between earning a No. 5 seed and finishing outside of the West's top 10. Every game counts, and it's up to Westbrook to get his team off to a hot start.
As Grantland's Zach Lowe explains, it's going to be exciting, but the offense may struggle more than we're accustomed to seeing from these Thunder:
"It will be exciting to see Westbrook stretch himself. He’s probably going to lead the league in scoring and usage rate until Durant gets back. But he is not a multidimensional, on- and off-ball threat like Durant. He doesn’t instill panic running off screens, he can’t shoot over anyone at anytime, and he’s still in the early stages of developing a post-up game that has been useful against smaller point guards.
Defenses in today’s NBA, with loosened zone rules, can clog the paint and strangle even the world’s best drivers when they know what’s coming. Westbrook has come so far in his career, and much of the endless criticism aimed at him has been off base. He takes three or four terrible shots every game, sure, but he’s an unstoppable freight train going to the hoop, and he has made subtle improvements in his passing every season.
Durant’s gravity away from the ball, and his screens for Westbrook, have helped clear those paths to the basket. Space will be tighter now, though [Thunder coach Scott] Brooks can tinker with the rotation to maximize it. The Thunder’s offense occasionally fizzled out when Durant was the lone scorer; it will happen more often with Westbrook.
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But it's hard to be that definitive.
Part of the reason for the pressure is that no one really knows exactly how Westbrook will fare without Durant. It's been fun to speculate about him in the past, wondering if he could win an MVP like Derrick Rose did as a shoot-first, do-everything point guard, but there's limited hard data to support any claims.
Durant carried the Thunder without Westbrook, bolstering his MVP candidacy, going on a ridiculous tear and keeping the Thunder's win total growing at a constant rate. But can Westbrook do the same?
Based on the severe lack of time he's spent without the reigning MVP on the floor, we have no idea:
Durant has been the injury-avoiding mainstay in the lineup ever since Westbrook entered the league out of UCLA for the 2008-09 season. He's always formed a dynamic duo with his point guard, and this situation has simply never popped up, save for the few minutes that Westbrook will occasionally spend on the court while his teammate catches his breath on the pine.
And that simply doesn't matter.
There will be no sympathy for the floor general if he and the Thunder stumble out of the gates. There will be no excuses made for him if he doesn't capitalize on this opportunity, an opportunity his playing style seems to claim he's wanted for quite some time—even if he's never explicitly expressed such a desire. There will be no forgiveness if he succumbs to the pressure.
The expectations are still there, and they're never going away.
Struggles Thus Far
Let's see what we can glean from the small samples that represent Westbrook's performance without the league's reigning MVP on the court, dating all the way back to his rookie season.
We're not as concerned with defense, given Serge Ibaka's continuing presence, the overall effectiveness of Scott Brook's systems and the other defensive pieces on the roster. The point-preventing unit will suffer without Durant, but offense remains the primary concern.
Below, you can see Westbrook's offensive rating with and without Durant for each season of his career, per NBA.com's statistical database (subscription required):
There's an interesting trend starting to form there, as it appears Westbrook is beginning to gain comfort operating as the leader of the Thunder. After all, his offensive rating sans his talented teammate has gone up each of the last few seasons, peaking with the 41 minutes that qualified this past go-round. In fact, that was the very first time his offensive rating without Durant had surpassed the number he produced while sharing the court.
But is this actually a trend, or merely the product of small samples, ones that can produce wonky results rather easily?
We won't know until there's more data provided to us by the opening salvo of the 2014-15 regular season, but the preseason already put a bit of a damper on the hopes. As Anthony Slater detailed for NewsOK.com, Westbrook struggled throughout exhibition season after Durant went down with his devastating foot injury:
"When Durant was in the lineup, Russell Westbrook could afford the occasional bad shooting night. Those 4-of-14’s could be masked by KD’s 12-of-18’s. But with Durant gone — carrying with him that extreme efficiency — Westbrook’s makes-to-takes percentage will likely carry more weight. If he’s off, it’s tough to see the Thunder beating many good teams. In the final three preseason games, Westbrook went a combined 14-of-43 from the field. OKC lost each by wide margins. Against Utah, he had his dominant spurts — he followed a nice first-half post-up of Dante Exum by swiping the rookie and slamming in the open court. But his mid-range jumper has been off. And that’s hurt the offense. Westbrook was 6-of-16 on Tuesday night, and the Thunder was outscored by 20 points with him on the court. Can’t happen in Portland next Wednesday.
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According to RealGM.com, the high-flying 1-guard averaged 12.0 points, 3.3 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game throughout the preseason, but he also coughed the ball up 4.2 times during the average outing, shot 36.9 percent from the field and made only one of his 10 deep attempts. His player efficiency rating was a meager (by his standards, at least) 18.7.
It's just the preseason, but it could be indicative of upcoming struggles. Though there's plenty of time for him to turn things around—and perhaps he will—there are certainly some critics already salivating at the thought of tearing him apart when the Thunder don't emerge with an elite record during the opening portion of the 2014-15 campaign.
The pressure is on. There's no doubt about that now for a player who's experienced unrelenting scrutiny throughout the entirety of his career.
Westbrook is finally getting a chance to prove himself as a No. 1 option, and there's only one certainty heading into what's set to be a rather interesting opening.
Plenty of shots will fly, but excuses won't.
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