Russell Westbrook, his vigour, and the tenacity with which he used to play are fading away quickly but it’ll never be forgotten.
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It’s a hard pill to swallow that the 33-year-old, who is now, just an unwanted contract for most franchises in the league, is among the NBA’s greatest 75 players of all time.
But if we watch Westbrook’s highlights from just two years back, we’ll know what the 6’3 guard was all about. Recency bias has made us all forget that this man has led his teams to Playoffs with just one more All-Star in the squad.
See it, or don’t, Russell Westbrook is one of the NBA’s all-time greats. A triple-double machine who has statistically proven himself better than Oscar Robertson.
Because of the stats, we bring in a lot of Russ and Oscar comparisons over the years, but game-wise, there was a 6’4 guard in LA who helped Magic Johnson and Co. bring in 3 Championships with his Brodie-like vigour.
John Salley tells Byron Scott had a similar game to Russell Westbrook but better jump shots
Byron Scott was one of the main reasons why Magic Johnson has five and not two championships in his trophy cabinet.
Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar might have been the face of it all, but without the “unstoppable” Scott their legacies wouldn’t be the same.
Listen to John Salley talk with him on his Byron Scott Podcast and compare him to Westbrook while addressing the former had a better jump shot.
His career statistics might never help him get into the Basketball Hall of Fame, but those 3 Championships without Byron’s 18p-3.5r-3.5a average in those 3 years would not have been possible.
Because of the abundance of greatness in that era, Scott got snubbed for his All-Star selections. Believe it or not, he has none.
It’s just been 2 years that Russ has been missing out on All-Star and All-NBA teams and forget how tremendous he once was.
His jump shots were never his strong suit, but this off-season, it seems like he has worked a lot for changing that, let’s see if it could be translated into something special when the 2022-23 season begins.
