Ish Smith drove in from Charlotte to spend time with the new recruit. He was already committed to play basketball at Wake Forest, but another promising guard in his high school class was visiting all the way from Los Angeles. For all Smith knew, maybe they would follow in Chris Paul’s footsteps together as a backcourt tandem.
Smith had a pleasant time on the visit. As they hung out, he got to know “a quiet kid from California.” Then, eventually, it was time to get in the gym for a workout with some of Wake Forest’s players. Casual pickup. Nothing serious.
That’s when 17-year-old Russell Westbrook dunked on an upperclassman.
“I ain’t putting no names out there,” Smith said, laughing. “I don’t want nobody catching a stray when they’re sitting at the house chilling.”
Westbrook ended up choosing UCLA, but he reunited with Smith years later in Oklahoma City and Washington. Smith was a smiling journeyman, Westbrook a scowling superstar. With heightened national exposure, his persona and play style became both wildly popular and controversial. Smith possessed a unique understanding that none of it was for show, none of it was manufactured. Everything Westbrook is and was, Smith knew since that day in North Carolina.
“The temperature could be 40 degrees,” he told The Denver Post. “He runs at 250 degrees at all times. I love that about him.”
Westbrook turned up the temperature in Ball Arena to 250 degrees on a memorable Saturday night, compiling 16 points, five rebounds, five assists and five steals to ignite the Nuggets in a Game 7 romp of his former team.
It was the culmination of an all-time revenge series. The Clippers dumped Westbrook last summer. The Nuggets collected him off the scrap heap and hoped to embolden him in a bench role — with Nikola Jokic’s endorsement. Left wide open in the series opener, Westbrook made a game-saving 3-pointer and later added a game-clinching defensive swipe. He acknowledged afterward that he was being intentionally ignored by his ex.
And he politely declined to go into detail about his opinion of that choice, vowing to return to the topic “after we take care of business.”
With a Clip-eating grin, the 36-year-old point guard accepted the invitation after Game 7.
“I think they believed that was their best bet of stopping me or taking me out of this series,” Westbrook said. “… I don’t know what I shot for the series. Somebody has to tell me.”
He finished 42% from 3-point range.
“Damn, that solid,” he said, feigning surprise. “I guess it didn’t work out.”
The numbers were phenomenal. But Westbrook’s impact on the series transcended them. During Game 6, James Harden buried a step-back 3-pointer over Nuggets guard Christian Braun. Westbrook was promptly in Braun’s ear, giving instructions on how to keep Harden off-balance and prevent him from getting to that shot.
In their last two wins of the series, Braun and the Nuggets held Harden to a combined 5-of-16 shooting with six turnovers.
“Maybe the biggest part was Russ,” Braun said. “He’s played against James. He’s played with James. So (he) kind of knows his game and was telling me what looks to give him, when to give him this look, when to force him right. … Over the course of the series, I think I got better and better as we went.
“The game (Westbrook) was hurt, he talked a lot. … His knowledge is off the charts. It’s fun to learn from him. And it’s pretty crazy. When I did listen to what he was saying, a lot of the things that he was saying did happen.”
Smith, a former Nuggets guard himself, similarly swears by Westbrook’s desire to uplift teammates. “He has his clothing company, and he’ll make sure everybody has clothes, shoes,” Smith said. “Putting together team dinners. He’s all about camaraderie.”
His emphasis on camaraderie can manifest itself aggressively, of course. He yells in the huddle sometimes. He fumes on the bench. He barks in practices and film sessions.
Nuggets interim coach David Adelman has said since taking over that he hopes the team can locate a healthy amount of tension when necessary.
By the same token, Westbrook’s intensity on the court can function for good or evil or somehow both at any given moment. He recognized that paradox himself after Game 7, offering one of the most clear-eyed and good-humored encapsulations of the Russ Roller Coaster ever shared.
“My ability to be a force of nature on the floor is what I pride myself on,” he said. “So whatever that looks like. It may be a turnover. It may be a missed shot. But it may be a steal. It may be a dunk. It may be a missed three. It may be a made three. It’s gonna be all of that. It’s gonna be everything. So you just take it for how it comes, and whatever happens, you go with it. … As long as I leave it on the floor, and god willing (I can) go out and continue to compete, I’m grateful for it.”
The Nuggets’ first-round matchup was a delectably bitter form of serendipity for Westbrook. Their second-round opponent is a more sentimental form of it. He remains beloved in Oklahoma City, where he won an MVP award and where Denver tips off a new series Monday (7:30 p.m. MT). Westbrook did face the Thunder in a playoff setting once — but in the sterile environment of the 2020 bubble.
No audience. No standing ovations. No jeers. None of the collective adrenaline and anxiety that Westbrook harnesses more chaotically than any NBA player this millennium. That stuff is his oxygen.
When he plays to the crowd, when he exalts after a dunk or an interception or an alley-oop pass, it’s as if he’s entering a spiritual state. He insists he is actively thinking in those moments, though, that “as much as people may not think (it), I’m very smart.”
So what was he thinking during his most epic out-of-body experience yet as a Denver Nugget?
After picking Ivica Zubac’s pocket in the middle of a 30-point blowout, Westbrook galloped for an easy dunk then used the rim as a playground. That’s an automatic technical foul. But Westbrook celebrated it.
“When I was about to get off the rim backward,” he explained, “then I just said, ‘Nah. I’m gonna just stay up here and try to break the rim.’ And then the tech came.”
It didn’t matter. No amount of technical fouls could change the result. The Clippers were in the palm of Westbrook’s hands, and the temperature was rising past 250 degrees.
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