Russell Westbrook: Oklahoma City Thunder's Other Superstar

With each ferocious, gravity-be-damned tomahawk he unleashes, Russell Westbrook is quickly destroying the stereotype of what an NBA point guard should be.

His success does not come from calculated and precise passing or painstaking attention to detail, traits commonly associated with great floor generals --- it comes from his reckless nature.

If John Stockton’s game was the Mona Lisa, then Westbrook’s is a few drums of gas and an open flame. It’s explosive, chaotic, violently beautiful. And it’s incredibly effective.

After Westbrook’s brilliant performance for Team USA this summer, nearly every so-called expert was predicting him to eventually make that rare leap to superstardom. However, I’m not sure anyone expected him to burst onto the elite level so quickly.

In just his third year, Westbrook is averaging career highs in points (22.1), assists (8.5) and rebounds (4.9). Assuming he maintains his current pace through the last 24 games of this season, he will join Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Gary Payton, Chris Paul, and LeBron James as the only players to post those numbers in the last forty years. In other words, he’s really damn good.

Westbrook also boasts a Player Efficiency Rating of 23.59, good for eleventh in the league and second among point guards, trailing only the aforementioned Paul. PER is perhaps the most complicated formula ever conceived by man, but essentially it adds up a player’s positive stats (field goals, rebounds, assists, blocks, shooting percentage, etc.) and subtracts the negative ones (missed shots, turnovers, personal fouls, etc.) to gauge a player’s overall effectiveness. So to put it quite simply, among current point guards, only Paul brings more to the table and takes less off of it than Westbrook. It’s also worth mentioning that Westbrook is only 22 years old, a fact that should be absolutely terrifying for the rest of the league.

Of course, this is not to say Westbrook is without his faults. His 3.8 turnovers per game is the second highest in the NBA; but frankly, I don’t think Thunder coach Scott Brooks gives a damn. When you have a player of Westbrook’s caliber, you shrug off the turnovers and trust he‘s going to make up for it next time down the floor.

The more glaring weakness in Westbrook’s game is his borderline atrocious 3-point shooting, which is currently at 29.9%. To put that in perspective, the league average is 36%. But as bad as his long-distance shooting has been, its not an incurable problem by any means; some kid named Michael Jordan once shot 27.6% on threes, and I think his career turned out just fine.

Despite his minor faults, Westbrook is a spectacularly explosive athlete, racing down the path to greatness at a ridiculous pace. And he’s doing it in an unconventional way. By unleashing his chaotic nature, Westbrook is wreaking havoc on the rest of the league. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, just check out this. Or this. Or this. Yeah, he's pretty good.