Playing with LeBron Ruined Westbrook’s Legacy

The Brodie is bouncing; Russell Westbrook has officially retired from basketball.

And it’s a damn shame that he had to go out like that.

Despite being a member of the NBA’s Top 75, a former NBA MVP, a nine-time NBA All-Star, a nine-time All-NBA performer, a 3x NBA assists champion and a 2x NBA scoring champion, Westbrook became a punchline on his way out the door.

The fact that Russ currently ranks first amongst point guards all-time in points scored, first in rebounds, first in triple-doubles and fourth in assists is immaterial. Nobody cares that Westbrook has more career assists than the greatest passer ever (Magic Johnson) or more career points than the greatest shooter ever (Steph Curry). All anybody wanted to talk about during his final seasons was the jump shot that hit side of the backboard the night before, or that turnover he had in the final minutes of a loss two games before.

Why? Because he played with LeBron James.

Anybody with eyes could tell you that the LeBron-Westbrook pairing in Los Angeles was going to be clunky. Both guys are at their best with the ball in their hands and neither one is a great shooter. Maybe The King figured since he and Dwyane Wade were able to overcome their similarly awkward fit that the same would happen with him and Russ. He must’ve forgot how invaluable it was to have a stretch-5 like Chris Bosh at center to help with the spacing instead of a rim-running monster like Anthony Davis. But I digress.

Now, that’s not to say that this was entirely LeBron’s fault. On the contrary, anybody who was around the team at that time would tell you that James did his best to make it work; He regularly told anybody who would listen that the best thing for the team would be to ‘Let Russ be Russ’. Unfortunately, because LeBron is a larger-than-life personality with a sea of sycophants in the sports media space who are quick to praise him when things go well and even quicker to blame his teammates when things go sideways, it only made sense that Russ would be turned into the scapegoat when the preseason title favorite Lakers wound up missing the playoffs entirely during that first season together.

Unfortunately, the ‘Westbrick’ moniker that Russ earned in Los Angeles followed him the rest of his career. Things got so bad that we had an anonymous front office executive go out of his way to warn Erik Spoelstra and the Miami Heat not to sign Russ if they had any aspiration of winning a championship.

Forget the fact that there was a five-year stretch before he got to LA where Westbrook averaged 26.0 points, 10.3 rebounds and 10.1 assists, had a net-rating of +6.7, and completely changed our perception of triple-doubles in the process. Hell, Westbrook’s MVP season in 2017 was so monstrous that the nerds had to rewrite the Box Plus-Minus formula because it wasn’t calibrated to handle that level of statistical dominance. Before the change, Westbrook had a BPM in 2017 of +15.6, a number that was a full point-and-a-half higher than the next closest player’s best individual season (Nikola Jokic’s +14.2 in 2025-26).

Was Westbrook a perfect player? No. Did his style of play at time prevent his teams from winning at the highest level? Yes. But you could say the same thing about Allen Iverson, and AI was generally revered as he rode off into the sunset. 

The difference between AI and Russ? Iverson never faced the ire of LeBron’s minions in the media.