Russell Westbrook III is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association. A member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, he is a nine-time NBA All-Star and earned the NBA Most Valuable Player Award for the 2016–17 season.

Russell Westbrook: Is Russell Westbrook Retiring, Exit Interview Video, Trade Rumors

Is Russell Westbrook Retiring:

The Lakers really should have seen this coming. They should’ve known how little sense Russell Westbrook, perhaps the worst shooter in NBA history and among its least interested defenders, made on a roster built around LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

When the Houston Rockets bought him in 2020, he had almost as much a dry market as the Lakers did. Were it not for the nearly identical contract to the then-injured John Wall, Houston might not have been able to dump him at all.

Most NBA teams have realized how limited Westbrook is. The Lakers were just the last suckers on the table, landing Westbrook a year earlier than Washington only to their surprise, that no one wanted him seven months later.

Exit Interview Video:

When a season ends like the Lakers, there’s a good chance that some complaints will air during player exit interviews. Russell Westbrook walked into the media room with a few people.

Just days after Broderick Turner of The LA Times reported that ‘Russ has never respected Frank from day one’, Westbrook made several critical comments about Frank Vogel. The head coach was officially sacked by the Lakers on Monday, but he knew.

Earlier in the interview, Westbrook said that the coaching staff failed to facilitate conversations with him, Eddie and LeBron James about adjusting on-court strategy based on the stars playing that night.

Trade Rumors:

The biggest — and most obvious — hurdle for the Lakers is going to be evident in the upcoming off-season, which will be figuring out what the future holds for Russell Westbrook.

While the preference seems to be, given how disastrous this season was, for him not to play in Los Angeles again, getting a contract north of $47 million next year will be no easy task, to say the very least. 

But it is not as impossible as one scenario might seem. The Lakers have surrounded themselves when it comes to relocating Westbrook, yet it’s a corner to run out of options, even if doing so requires some flexibility and pain. In the past week alone, there have been several reports about potential Westbrook suitors, with the Lakers having few options.

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