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At the halfway mark of his first season with the Los Angeles Lakers and aware that his play is under constant scrutiny as the team struggles, Russell Westbrook said he has taken direction on what he should be doing differently.
"They don't want me to do this, but everybody wants me to do it," he said on the video conference call. I'm over the situation with what everyone else wants me to do and what they think I should be doing.
In the Lakers' Christmas Day loss to the Brooklyn Nets, Westbrook had a rough night shooting the ball. He scored 13 points on 4-for-20 shooting, which included 11 missed shots in the restricted area. He tied his own record for the most missed shots that close to the basket in a single game in the last 10 seasons, having had the same amount of chippies go awry.
"Let Russ be Russ" has been a common refrain since L.A. acquired him in an attempt to accommodate the nine-time All-Star.
The 14-year veteran said that he is taking the same approach he always has and that outsized expectations of him, joining the Lakers as the only player in league history to average a triple-double four seasons in his career, could be warping people's perspective.
"I think I've been fine," he said. The conversation has been about how I'm playing and what I'm doing, but I think people are expecting me to have 25 and 15. Everybody has to understand that that is not a normal thing.
All 34 of the Lakers' games this season have been played by Westbrook. In 22 games, James has played. Anthony Davis is expected to miss a month with a left knee injury.
His production waned while he was there. The Oklahoma City guard is scoring at his lowest point total since his second year in the league, while shooting a career-worst 50% from the field, 31.1% from 3 and a career-worst 65% from the foul line. He's sixth in the league in assists, and third in the league in rebound rate, with 7.9 per game. His turnovers are second worst in the league, trailing only Brooklyn's James Harden.
"People are saying 'let Russ be Russ' and nobody knows what that means," he said. "I think people just say 'let Russ be Russ', but nobody actually knows what that means." I'm going to make sure I do what I'm supposed to do. Let everything else outside the locker room take care of itself.
Both James and Lakers acting head coach, David Fizdale, who is in charge while Frank Vogel is out because of the league's COVID-19 protocols, defended Westbrook after the Christmas debacle.
James shrugged off the missed shots and praised the competitive drive of his teammate, while Fizdale said that he wanted it to work in L.A. so much that he's pressing.
The Lakers were able to hold a practice on Monday, but will have to travel to Houston and Memphis on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The L.A. will look to end its five-game losing streak when it faces the Houston.
Fizdale said that when you lose five in a row it's misery. You're not happy. There are two ways to respond to this. Right? The only thing we can do is respond to the five-game losing streak. We can either whine, moan, point fingers, or talk about what we need to do to get better and improve.
