THE WAY RUSSELL WESTBROOK left Oklahoma City isn’t a sore spot for anyone in town. Not the way it was when Kevin Durant left in 2016, or James Harden in 2013. Those departures were messy. Westbrook’s was not, even though he did initiate it behind the scenes.
So, when he checked into the game with 5:17 left in the first quarter of Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals, as the Thunder’s current MVP candidate, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, was at the free throw line being serenaded with MVP chants, the crowd stopped hyping up their new star and stood to cheer for their old one.
To the dismay of fans, it brought out the best in Westbrook, who made several critical plays down the stretch as the Nuggets rallied from a 13-point fourth-quarter deficit. The last one occurred when it mattered most.
With just over eight seconds left, and Denver down 119-118, Nuggets guard Christian Braun secured a rebound on the right wing and immediately swung an outlet pass to Westbrook, who was sprinting down the right sideline at a speed only he seems to possess.
As fate would have it, with the game on the line, Westbrook was confronted with a game-deciding choice. Every soul in the building assumed he would drive into the teeth of the Thunder defense to try to get up a potential winning shot. The Nuggets had seen that before, to varying degrees of success. So too had the Thunder.
Thunder center Chet Holmgren even backed up, hoping to lure Westbrook into a lose-lose choice: driving in himself or pulling up for 3. It was a challenge. And Westbrook does not back down from challenges.
Even Denver’s broadcast crew didn’t think Westbrook could resist. In approximately three seconds, inside the Altitude Sports studio, they encapsulated the full range of the Russell Westbrook experience.
With 7.2 seconds left in the fourth, Westbrook took the pass from Braun — and accelerated. First toward Thunder forward Jalen Williams, then toward rim-protecting big man Holmgren.
“No, no, no. No! Noooo!”
“Oh, geez!”
Then, mouths agape, they stared at the studio screen in awe. Westbrook did not drive into a 7-footer and risk a turnover or bad shot. Nor did he stop above the 3-point line and hoist up his own shot.
Instead, he threw a perfect pass to an open Aaron Gordon on the left wing. With 2.8 seconds left, Gordon rattled in a 25-footer to give the Nuggets an improbable 121-119 lead.
After the game, Westbrook explained his thinking. “I saw Chet in the paint and my job is to drive and kick,” he said. “AG was ready to shoot it. He’s been making big shots all year long.”
It’s impossible to say if this example of decision-making will be an isolated incident or evidence of real change.
This Nuggets team has won a title, something Westbrook is still chasing. And on nights like this, you get the feeling that championship experience is rubbing off on Westbrook. On others, it very much does not.
“This is a veteran group, guys have been here before,” Westbrook said. “It’s very helpful when your brother has your back. I thought we did a good job of just having each other’s back, through all the ups and downs, good calls, bad calls, missed shots, turnovers.”
In many ways, the story of Westbrook is the story of the 2024-25 Nuggets — the extreme highs: the game-winning bursts of energy, the temporarily unstoppable two-man game with Nikola Jokic; the unbelievable rebounds and defensive plays; and then the inexplicable lows: the missed layups, the poor shooting, the even worse decision-making, the lack of accountability, the disruption to the Nuggets’ previously pristine locker room culture.
The Nuggets themselves don’t know how this experiment will end. But their hopes that it doesn’t might hinge on the most high-variance, volatile player in the game.
After Chet Holmgren falters at the free throw line, Aaron Gordon sinks a go-ahead 3-pointer in the final seconds for the Nuggets.
IF YOU CLOSED your eyes and watched Westbrook warm up on the Paycom Center court, a full three hours before Games 1 and 2 of this second-round playoff series between the Nuggets and Thunder, it’d be easy to feel as if you’d gone back in time.
Because 36-year-old Westbrook still looks like prime, 30-year-old Westbrook who nearly tore the cover off this arena during his glory years: His chiseled physique remains; his meticulously planned warmup starts at exactly the same time it used to, and lasts exactly the same amount of time.
The only difference, of course, is that he was warming up on the other basket and running to the other hallway after attempting his finishing shot from the very corner of the court.
Westbrook gives himself two shots to make it. If he hits the first, he sprints off, happy. Same if he hits the second one. But if he misses both, he still sprints into the hallway, slightly less pleased. Routine, in this case, is more important than results.
He has been back in Oklahoma City as a visiting player with the Rockets, Wizards, Lakers and Clippers. But this time feels different. Maybe because their favorite son is now standing in the way of the next great team that has sprung from the wake he left behind. Maybe because he’s older now, and hasn’t found a home that loved him the way OKC did, since he chose to leave in 2019.
The story of how Westbrook landed on the Denver Nuggets is not what you think it is. This was not the last stop on the local train he has been taking through the final years of his Hall of Fame career. Or some flight of fancy from the mind of Jokic, basketball’s elusive genius.
The Nuggets had coveted Westbrook for a few years before they finally signed him as a free agent this offseason, once the LA Clippers, like so many others, decided the full Westbrook experience wasn’t worth it anymore.
They had talked about signing him after the Los Angeles Lakers discarded him in a February 2023 trade to the Utah Jazz, where he was promptly bought out. And there were those in the Nuggets organization who, sources told ESPN, believed their group of hard-working, enormously skilled, yet somewhat quiet group of players needed someone, with “some spice,” as team president Josh Kroenke recently described Westbrook, to get over the playoff hump they kept crashing into.
No one in the league can bring the type of energy to his teams that Westbrook does. But it’s nearly impossible to harness.
But the idea was still enticing enough to the Nuggets back then because Jokic, who they believed was the best player in the world, was squarely in his prime, and they knew the window to win an NBA championship closes a lot faster if you keep bumping up against the same walls.
Ultimately, the Nuggets decided against it, sources said, because they worried Westbrook would destabilize the locker room and undercut the confidence of point guard Jamal Murray.
That decision proved wise. The Nuggets went on to win their first championship a few months later.
But this past offseason was different. They didn’t defend their championship last season. They regressed, losing in the second round again after key role players departed in free agency and the youngsters who were supposed to replace them were slow to bloom. That couldn’t happen again, they thought. Not with Jokic playing better than ever in his age-30 season.
So the Nuggets went for it, knowing the man is a human pros and cons list.
On the pro side: Westbrook is fiery, focused, always competitive, always available.
On the con: He can be moody, out of control on the court, stubborn, immature when he doesn’t get his way.
All of that has revealed itself this season and then some. Westbrook has been exactly what the Nuggets needed at times — and at others has also been their undoing. He has single-handedly won and lost them games. He has inspired great loyalty and great annoyance among teammates — sometimes on the same day.
They are all keenly aware of how difficult it is to depend on someone so volatile — and he might be, too.
“My ability to be a force of nature on the floor is what I pride myself on,” Westbrook said after helping the Nuggets close out the Clippers in Game 7 of their first-round series. “Whatever that looks like — it may be a turnover, a missed shot, a steal, a dunk, a missed 3, a made 3 — it’s going to be all of that. You take it for how it comes, and whatever happens, you go with it. I’ve always been like that.”
On April 1, the Nuggets experienced nearly all of this in a span of 15 seconds.
With 14.2 seconds left in double overtime, the Nuggets up 139-138, Westbrook intercepted a pass from Anthony Edwards and took off, with the opportunity to ice the game, one in which Jokic had a 60-point triple-double.
But Westbrook missed a point-blank layup — even worse, leaving time of the clock for another Timberwolves possession.
On the next play, Westbrook lagged behind and didn’t see an open Nickeil Alexander-Walker in the corner, and then fouled him shooting as he sprinted toward him in trying to recover. Alexander-Walker made the three free throws to swing the game for Minnesota.
It was a brutal loss and Westbrook did not address his role in it for days.
Eight days later, interim coach David Adelman showed how he was going to take a firmer hand in managing Westbrook. Former coach Mike Malone, multiple sources said, had erred on the side of giving Westbrook the kind of latitude on and off the court that Jokic and Murray got — which didn’t sit well with everyone. And which, ironically, was why Westbrook wasn’t in town when Malone and general manager Calvin Booth both were fired and Adelman was given the job on an interim basis.
He’d been granted permission to spend the off day at home with his family in Los Angeles, which in turn led to a conversation among the Nuggets decision-makers whether he should be asked to return to Denver and be with the team as it tried to regroup, or meet them — as previously planned — in Sacramento the next day. Ultimately, he met them in Sacramento.
The very first game of Adelman’s tenure, after Westbrook missed a 3-pointer, a short jumper and a layup on consecutive possessions early in the fourth quarter, Adelman subbed in second-year point guard Jalen Pickett for him and let Pickett play the remainder of the crunch-time minutes as Denver held on to stop a four-game losing streak. Westbrook finished with a season-low 17 minutes.
The point was made.
The whirlwind continued into the beginning of the playoffs.
After a first-round loss in which Westbrook noticeably pouted when he was taken out at the end of the game, one player told ESPN, “It’s crazy. [He’s] changed the entire vibe and spirit of our team.”
But after another game, an assistant told ESPN, “Russ was competing his ass off. I can’t believe he’s still doing this in Year 17. I wish we had 10 of him.'”
MINUTES AFTER THE Nuggets lost Game 2 of their first-round series against the Clippers, Adelman had a problem.
While he’d been at the postgame lectern, there’d been a heated discussion between Westbrook and Gordon in the locker room, multiple sources told ESPN. Gordon had challenged Westbrook about his attitude.
Outside the locker room, one player relayed why Gordon might’ve done so.
“He’s so immature,” he said of Westbrook.
Their season was on the precipice, nearing a chaotic and dysfunctional end to what had been a chaotic and dysfunctional season after the team fired Malone and Booth with only three games left in the regular season.
Instead, it seemed to mark the beginning of a turnaround.
The Nuggets won three of their next four games to disperse the Clippers, including a blowout Game 7 win in which Westbrook scored 16 points on 5-for-9 shooting, with 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 steals. In the decisive second quarter, in which Denver outscored LA 37-21, Westbrook played all 12 minutes, scoring 10 points on 3-of-4 shooting, with 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals.
“The great thing about this team is we’re not afraid to talk honestly with each other,” one player told ESPN of the Game 2 argument, “and hold each other accountable.”
That’s what you say when you win. And at least for now, Westbrook and the Nuggets have the previously dominant Thunder locked into a Greco-Roman-style battle. Each game feels like a saga. Nobody has any legs left — except the guy who still has more energy than a lightning charger.
“We’ve turned the page throughout the year,” Westbrook said after the win in Game 1 against the Thunder. “There were some ups and downs, but we’ve done a good job of honing in on mistakes and then owning them. Addressing them and communicating. If you want to go a long way in this playoff run, I think you got to be honest with each other.”
These are not things Westbrook has said before. Anywhere.
In many ways, his superpower is his kryptonite — that he never changes, no matter the pressure or situation. He sneers at the idea of compromise. He nearly played himself out of the league rather than accept a bench role with the Lakers. His former agent even cut ties with him over it.
“I can’t see another team doing it,” one team source said of the Nuggets’ signing Westbrook, after unceremonious endings with his previous four teams, “but I never thought we would do it.”
What is clear, though, is that they had no other choice. And they wouldn’t be here without him.
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon and Shams Charania contributed to this report.