The Nuggets are the first team to not “let Russ be Russ,” and it’s working.
When Voltaire published the novel Candide in 1759, he likely didn’t expect it to meet so much resistance — and for so much time. It was banned almost immediately in Paris. Within a few years, the Roman Catholic Church banned it. But the real shocker was the banning of Candide in the Soviet Union, then later the United States in 1929. (The postal service refused to deliver it to a Harvard French class after agents read the book.)
Despite it all, Candide sold as well as a limited edition Jordans drop on SNKRs. However, by the time it was unbanned in the United States in 1959, a clean 200 years after its publishing, it was no longer so popular, at least outside of academic contexts. Its controversy seemed to have outlived its mainstream readership. But with its contempt for misinformation and ignorance, it has arguably never been more relevant.
Russell Westbrook is on a similar journey within the mainstream NBA discourse. Perhaps more than any player since Kobe Bryant, his style of play has been a lightning rod for controversy. For many years, he was a prism, more of a reflection of the individual viewer than an objective truth unto himself. He was your favorite player’s favorite player, with a diverse collection of hoopers ranging from Donte DiVincenzo to Victor Wembanyama to Ja Morant calling him their favorite at one point in their lives. Meanwhile, some incredibly talented writers and analysts have inferred that he is harmful to his own team’s chances. Perhaps no player has ever better symbolized the gap between the real hoopers (love him!) and the spreadsheet warriors (his true shooting percentage!).
Neither side has been clearly wrong, either. Russ is a genius, and he is an inefficient scorer. As a result, the former MVP has always been the determinant of his own destiny. In the past when his teams have won, it has been to a larger-than-normal extent because of his merit. At the same time, when his teams have lost, it has been to a larger-than-normal extent because of his mistakes.
Then, over time, all that controversy seemingly drifted away like fog under the sun. Maybe it was because Westbrook was no longer an MVP-caliber player, and maybe it was because he left the Los Angeles sports media ecosystem. But either way, the conversation around him these days is much more muted. He has become, like Candide, a topic relatively free to discuss. Just in time for people to no longer really be interested in having that discussion.
Yet, for the first time in almost a decade, Westbrook is a vital contributor on a title hopeful. He hasn’t played 10 or more playoff games since 2016, when Kevin Durant was his teammate on the Oklahoma City Thunder. Meanwhile, the Nuggets have played fewer than 10 playoff games in a run just once since 2019. They are tied for the second-best record in the West (43-25 as of publishing time), and recently thrashed the Thunder in a contest of MVP hopefuls. Westbrook started in that game, putting up 16 points on 10 shots, adding 7 assists and 5 rebounds, and he won his minutes, in terms of plus-minus.
And also perhaps for the first time, Westbrook is no longer the determinant of his own destiny. He doesn’t decide how the Denver Nuggets play. His isn’t the strong hand of fate. He is just another role player. Jokic decides how far the Nuggets go, not Westbrook.
Westbrook has accumulated the third-most games in NBA history in which he makes six or fewer shots, and attempts 18 or more, a stat that includes both the regular season and playoffs. He is behind only Joe Fulks and Bob Cousy, and just ahead of Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson. Yet how many such games does he have as a Nugget? Zero. He’s only attempted 18 shots or more thrice as a Nugget, shooting 49.1% from the field in both contests. Gone is this concept of him shooting his team “out” of a game.
Westbrook is also taking the lowest rate of mid-range shots of his career, just 21%, which is in the 10th percentile for his position. Just four years ago, half his shots came from the mid-range, near the top of the league. A career-low 7.9% of his possessions end with a shot or turnover out of isolation, yet those possessions are scoring at a rate of 0.92 points per try, which is the second-highest of his career. (Note: that tracking data begins in 2015-16, so it doesn’t cover his full time in the NBA.)
Meanwhile, a career-high 8.8% of his possessions end with a shot or turnover out of a cut, scoring 1.28 points per chance. That frequency is also a career high by a mile, and for the first time it’s been larger than his isolation frequency (7.9%).
As a result, Westbrook’s effective field-goal percentage is the highest it has ever been in his career. Those are the markers of a player who is changing his game to fit his team. The Westbrook of his MVP days isolated a ton, ran pick-and-rolls 50 or 60 times a game, and almost never cut off the ball. This Westbrook is different. He doesn’t dunk anymore, with only 21 on the season — one fewer than ground-bound Jokic. Now, Westbrook is much more of an off-ball player.
It has long been an axiom in the NBA that you have to “let Russ be Russ,” with even former head coaches publicly avowing the principle. But this is arguably the first time that a team is not letting Russ be Russ. It works because he’s letting Denver be a better version of itself. The direction of adaptation has switched, with player now suiting team rather than vice versa.
It also helps that Westbrook is taking a career-high share of his shots as corner triples, and also making a career-high 45% of them. He’s still missing from above the break, but he takes fewer of those, and he is such a ferocious downhill driver and cutter that he still threatens the defense from those areas even if he is a non-shooting threat.
At the same time, he has become an impactful defender — not always positively, but not resting on that end anymore either. He is able to weaponize his athleticism on that end in ways that other shave-on-the-rim point guards like Derrick Rose and Ja Morant never could. He generates defensive moments that end up in the box score, with his steal and block rates, as well as defensive rebounding, all around the 75th percentile for his position.
Older point guards simply don’t do this — Westbrook’s 2024-25 season is just the second time in NBA history a point guard age 35 or older has reached his steal and block rates. Add in Westbrook’s rebound rate, and he’s only the fifth point guard in history to reach such thresholds, no matter what age.
He can rise to the occasion of big matchups, such as when the Nuggets used him — a point guard — as a primary defender on many possessions against 7-foot-4 big Victor Wembanyama (He has guarded Wembanyama for more possessions this season than any other guard in the league). He won his minutes across a two-game series and collected five steals and a block.
This isn’t to say Westbrook is perfect. He can fall asleep on the defensive end. Even though he can be excellent as the low-man helper, and at tagging the roller or closing out to the corner, and moving through the rotations, he can also be late in those high-focus patterns. He can get back cut.
But this is what a helpful role player looks like. Not perfect, but potent in his role. Westbrook has dominated his minutes alongside Jokic, and the two blend well. They both pass to each other, with lots of little tiki-taka, small-space cuts and dishes and floaters. There is a mind-meld between the two.
Westbrook has not shown the ability to lead the team with Jokic off the floor, as his net rating alone without the Nuggets’ megastar plummets deep into the negative. He becomes a simulacrum of the player he once was, with his usage skyrocketing larger than that of any other Nugget without Jokic. His rate of 2-pointers that are assisted disintegrates from 54.4% when Jokic plays to 24.2% when he doesn’t, meaning there’s a huge amount more self-creation asked of Westbrook when Jokic is off the court. It doesn’t go very well, as his effective field-goal percentage evaporates from 58.5% with Jokic to 43.0% without, falling by a larger margin than that of any other Nuggets’ rotation player.
But again: He is not a star who attacks the rim as if destiny is hunting a chasedown block. Not anymore. He is not supposed to carry lineups with a team’s best player off the floor. He is only supposed to fit into what already works. And that he is doing wonderfully.
Voltaire’s Candide is a seminal text of realism. The world is what it is — not the best of all worlds, but the one we have. So tend your own garden. Westbrook has learned that lesson himself as his career has aged. He has tended his garden and tried not to be the best player, thus becoming the best version of himself, at least at this stage of his career. And because of that success, as well as the controversy around him shifting elsewhere, we can finally see Westbrook not for what he represents, but for what he is: a great and fallible player, and one who is finally ready to matter again in the playoffs.
