THE NIGHT OF Oct. 11, 2021, was no ordinary Monday in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants had played Game 3 of the National League Divisional Series at Dodger Stadium, while across town in Westwood, the NBA’s newest superteam was assembling for a private screening of Russell Westbrook‘s autobiographical documentary on Showtime, “Passion Play.”
Initially, no party had been planned because of local COVID-19 restrictions. But this documentary was important to Westbrook, so he paid for and arranged an IPIC theater, catering and COVID testing for all attendees, so his friends, family and new Los Angeles Lakers teammates could safely attend.
The Lakers had just opened training camp and were full of optimism for the season.
Sure, there had been skepticism inside and outside the franchise about how Westbrook would fit alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis. But eventually everyone involved had agreed the team needed a third star to help carry the load when — not if — James and Davis missed time due to injuries.
Much like on the Olympic team, the thinking went, fit didn’t matter as much as talent when everyone’s intentions were good.
“I don’t really have words for this season with the exception of … a lot of disarray.”Hall of Famer James Worthy on this year’s Lakers team
Westbrook had assured James and Davis in a series of meetings before and after the trade that he’d do whatever it took to make it work, which gave James and Davis the confidence to advocate for the marriage to Lakers management.
Showing up on that Monday night for Westbrook’s movie premiere was exactly the kind of thing NBA superstars do to affirm their intentions.
“It was really meaningful for LeBron to be there,” said Gotham Chopra, the film’s director, who’d worked with James on “Shut Up and Dribble.”
“I thought it was a great affirmation for Russ that he was there because of his stature in the game and the industry.”
For two years, Chopra had been filming a side of Westbrook rarely seen behind the coat of defiant armor that’s become his public persona. He could feel Westbrook’s excitement and nerves as the release date approached. So like James, Chopra made a point of being there to show support, flying cross-country the day of the premiere.
Aside from the preternaturally strong winds, it was a beautiful night. Westbrook was finally playing for his hometown team after 14 seasons in the NBA. He could take his kids to school in the morning or over to their grandparents’ house at night. His friends and family could attend home games.
This screening was at a theater five minutes from UCLA, where the basketball center’s court is named after him. It was all set up perfectly.
Then, comedy. The projector malfunctioned. And not just a little. It flat out broke. As the team waited in front of the dark screen, technicians worked for 15 minutes to try to fix it. They tried to run the film again.
“It just kept stopping midway through,” said one theatergoer. “It was so frustrating.”
Once they determined the projector was too broken to repair, everyone moved to a different theater and picked up the film where it had left off. Amazingly, nobody left.
IPIC theaters are as state of the art as they come. Leather recliners. All the amenities. Servers who deliver candy and drinks to your seats. Several viewing rooms had been set up for Westbrook’s premiere. His immediate family and the team were assigned to the biggest, nicest theater. And that was the one that wouldn’t play.
It was just an unfortunate mess, one nothing could fix.
And so began the 2021-2022 season for the Los Angeles Lakers.
AFTER THE LAKERS were eliminated from postseason contention Tuesday night, there were all sorts of post-mortems done on their demise.
“I don’t really have words for this season with the exception of … a lot of disarray,” Lakers Hall of Famer James Worthy said on the postgame show following the team’s 121-110 loss to the Phoenix Suns.
“It takes some type of consistency and some type of formula. It takes one thing to kind of go on … but they didn’t have anything going into the season and it just lasted the whole season.”
And much like the technical difficulties that no one could fix at Westbrook’s premiere, there’s no easy solution.
The Lakers diagnosed the problem with their 2020-21 team, a squad that went 42-30 and lost in the first round of the playoffs: James and Davis’ inconsistent availability due to injuries. Their solution was Westbrook.
Westbrook was a bad basketball fit, but team insiders insist the personality fit, alongside the often passive-aggressive James and nonconfrontational coach Frank Vogel, was even worse.
The ill-fitting roster didn’t help either. Four of the nine players who ended the season in Vogel’s rotation (Stanley Johnson, Wenyen Gabriel, Avery Bradley and D.J. Augustin) weren’t even on the team in training camp. Two of the starters on opening night (Kent Bazemore and DeAndre Jordan) either fell out of the rotation or were waived.
Throughout the season, Vogel often told confidants he felt like he was “searching.” Regardless of the answers he found, or didn’t, he’s expected to be replaced after the season, sources said.
It might not be Vogel’s fault, team insiders said, but firing a coach is the easiest change for the franchise to make.
The front office, led by president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka and special adviser Kurt Rambis, is expected to remain in power, sources said.
But there is no easy way to change the core group of James, Davis and Westbrook. The Lakers were reluctant to incentivize a trade for Westbrook by adding in their 2027 first-round pick at the trade deadline, especially when they have so few future draft assets to trade following the acquisition of Davis in 2019. Sources said they are similarly disinclined to tie up their salary cap in the future via a waive-and-stretch provision after finally completing the waive-and-stretch deal for Luol Deng this season ($5 million of the Lakers’ cap in 2021-22 was dead money from Deng’s deal).
And while it might be possible to trade Westbrook in the offseason, those deals are very limited because of his monstrous $47 million salary.
One option: Westbrook considering a buyout of the final year of his contract, but at least for now, sources close to the 2017 MVP expressed pessimism he would do that.
Westbrook is a prideful man. His swagger is both his sword and his shield, and he will not lay them down lightly. He is wary of the stigma that comes with accepting a buyout, one source close to him explained. But he also still believes he can contribute to a team at a high level.
Which leaves him and the Lakers back in the theater with the broken projector, waiting for a fix that might never come.
WHILE WESTBROOK IS hardly the only reason for the Lakers’ mess this season, the team’s decision to trade for him is as good a place as any to diagnose what went wrong and why.
In choosing Westbrook, the Lakers also effectively chose not to trade for DeMar DeRozan or Buddy Hield, which speaks to their organizational values (star power over basketball fit) and decision-making processes.
According to sources close to the situation, DeRozan met with James and Davis at James’ house in Brentwood multiple times, and there was initial interest in constructing a sign-and-trade with San Antonio that would have likely involved Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma and a draft pick. But because DeRozan was a free agent, the Lakers had to wait to act on that scenario. In the interim, talks with the Sacramento Kings for Hield and the Washington Wizards for Westbrook heated up before the NBA draft on July 29.
While timing factored into the choice of Westbrook or Hield (both available via trade before free agency) over DeRozan, sources close to the situation insist that James and Davis’ enthusiasm for Westbrook were what moved the process in that direction.
The Lakers have always been an organization that gives significant voice and influence to its stars. For better or worse, it is part of the brand, and was a significant selling point for James when he entrusted his golden years to the franchise as a free agent in 2018.
Look no further than the franchise’s relationship with Magic Johnson, the man who helped seal that four-year commitment from James. Johnson unceremoniously walked out on the Lakers just a year later over disputes with Pelinka, and a general discomfort with the restrictions that come with the role of president of basketball operations. But he still maintains significant access and influence with Lakers’ decision-makers, despite the damage his actions in 2019 did to the franchise.
Star power, in other words, has few limits. That is both empowering for basketball luminaries such as Johnson and James, and an ongoing organizational problem: Muddling roles and responsibilities — and confusing who is accountable when things go haywire.
THE PLAN COMING in was for Westbrook to assume a heavy playmaking role to help alleviate the burden on James, a reasonable position for a player who had been on the ball much of his career. But his decision-making frustrated the coaching staff and teammates almost immediately — Westbrook had 30 turnovers in his first five games.
“I think they lost faith in Russ as a ball handler after the first few weeks,” one team source said. “And he knew it because they took him off the ball and started asking him to stand in the corner or set screens.”
With Westbrook dislodged from his comfort zone on offense, the good intentions from the beginning of the season began to fade — fast.
He looked uncomfortable performing basic skills. Like he was forcing things … or rushing them … or hesitating. In November he missed four of the seven dunks he attempted. On Christmas Day he missed two more as the Lakers were trying to rally in the final minutes of a loss to the Brooklyn Nets. After that, he essentially stopped dunking altogether. In January, he dunked twice. In February, he was just 1-for-3.
People on the team and around the league began to wonder if something was wrong with his hands or eyes. It’s not often a player makes just 65% of his dunks in a season.
Sources close to Westbrook insist he has had his hands thoroughly checked by a specialist and that the treatment he receives regularly is no different than the regular treatment he does on his ankles and knees.
Westbrook jammed the fingers on his right hand last season in Washington, but he never missed time with the injury. In 2014, he’d broken that hand and had surgery. But that was eight years and six All-Star appearances ago.
Whatever the case, Westbrook was struggling and openly being mocked around the league — the Sacramento Kings in-house DJ played “Cold as Ice” each time he missed a shot on Jan. 13.
He needed support, publicly and privately. But there was little to be found.
The Lakers had tried to hire his former head coach Scott Brooks as an assistant coach. But a spot on the front of the bench evaporated when Jason Kidd tried to hire Mike Penberthy — who works closely with Davis — to join his new staff with the Dallas Mavericks. In response, the Lakers offered Penberthy a spot on Vogel’s bench and a raise, which created a domino effect. The spot and money for Brooks — a potential Westbrook ally — was gone. So was the spot and money for veteran coach Lionel Hollins, who’d been an important staffer for Vogel the past two seasons. Kidd instead poached well-regarded scout Greg St. Jean for his staff, which further depleted a Lakers’ bench that needed all the experience and brainpower it could get with a roster as challenging to unlock as this one.
Westbrook didn’t make things any easier on himself either. “I think the problem with Russ has been Russ’s response to all of it,” a team source said. “He doesn’t leave a window for people to have empathy for him.”
Westbrook grew defiant and stubborn in the face of criticism. His nightly sessions with the local media were often combative and terse.
After a blowout loss to the Dallas Mavericks on March 29, for example, Los Angeles Times reporter Broderick Turner asked Westbrook what needed to change for the team. Westbrook turned the question around on Turner, asking him what he thought should change. Turner followed up by saying it was his job to ask Westbrook, a member of the team, for his opinion, not to give his own.
It was uncomfortable. But Westbrook didn’t see it that way.
“Russell was like, ‘I actually thought that was a healthy conversation. I wasn’t mad,'” a source close to Westbrook said. As Westbrook often points out, when a team loses, reporters often ask the same questions after the game looking for new insight. Westbrook says he gets tired of answering the same way, so he turns it around on the reporter.
It may not be coming off to others the way Westbrook thinks it is. But it’s emblematic of his personality and instructive of the direct way he operates.
He is not flustered or uncomfortable by confrontation. If he has a conflict with someone, he addresses it, often aggressively.
The coaching staff was direct with him in film sessions and private discussions. His teammates weren’t always the same way.
“The reality of the season was that Russ has been in a dark corner, and he doesn’t know who to trust or who to believe,” a team source said. “Then, if something doesn’t go well for him, he backs up a little more.
“There’s also guys in the locker room who were so disgruntled about their position that every time something goes bad for Russ, they just find a way to feed the beast.
“Telling him the coaches hate you or the front office is trying to get rid of you. Anything to fuel that monster, and give him an enemy.”
THE SITUATION WAS crying out for leadership from the team, either with tough love or public support — anything to earn Westbrook’s trust.
Neither happened.
His teammates didn’t directly criticize him publicly, but they didn’t defend him either. If anything, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry offered the strongest public support for Westbrook all season when he told Yahoo: “I respect how he’s handled the whole year, just in terms of everything he’s been saying and how he’s been handling himself and protecting his family. … He’s a professional, and I’m proud of the way he’s conducting himself, and I’m there for him.”
There were those in the organization who felt only humiliation would spur Westbrook to change his style of play to fit better within the team structure. Vogel, for his part, believed they should stand by him and give him the space to figure it out, just as he had in other situations over the years, team sources said. While Vogel did eventually bench Westbrook at the end of games when he was not effective, he continued to start him, give him chances and praise him when he played well.
Pelinka had a few meetings with Westbrook during the season, to keep the lines of communication open. Veterans like Carmelo Anthony, James and Davis tried to reach out. But nobody seemed to get through.
“He’s got to be receptive,” one team source said.
But as someone close to Westbrook said, “Why is he going to listen if he feels like you’ve been letting him get crucified all year?”
Westbrook’s confidence clearly suffered throughout the season. But that confidence was also all he had, so he defended it fiercely.
As he said Tuesday night when the Suns finally eliminated the Lakers: “I learned a lot about a lot of different things within myself. I was able to just stay real faithful and true to what I believe in, regardless of what was thrown our way, or my way.”
The question everyone must answer now is this: Can any lessons Westbrook or the Lakers learned this season matter for next year? Or is this roster too far gone, too expensive to change?
After so many technical and existential difficulties, it would be easier to get up and leave the theater. Start the movie over, or watch another one entirely.
But logistically that might not be possible. And far more than the projector needs to be fixed.
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