The Oklahoma City Thunder guard has carried his team on his shoulders during a record-breaking season. But is such excellence sustainable?Russell Westbrook doesn’t breathe; he takes air hostage. While such lines have been in the past reserved for Hunter Pence signs or Chuck Norris jokes, Westbrook has displayed such sangfroid for Oklahoma City Thunder that he has become a serious contender for the NBA’s MVP award. He might also have become the most interesting man in basketball.Perhaps more appropriately, Westbrook takes the ball hostage, playing the game with the heat of a thousand suns. This fury has driven him to break the NBA record for triple-doubles in a season. But in the NBA, over-exertion of stars has become a significant...
Oscar Robertson’s records were once considered to be among sport’s unbreakable records. The Oklahoma City Thunder guard just changed thatFifty-five years ago when Oscar Robertson set his record for triple-doubles in a season while playing for the Cincinnati Royals, there was no special ceremony or blowout media coverage. The term “triple-double” did not exist at the time and didn’t enter the basketball lexicon until years later, its mainstream emergence aided in 1992 by a Los Angeles-based rapper who happened to notch one on the playground one good and sunny day. Not only was there not intense coverage of the statistical mark in 1962, Robertson didn’t even know he had achieved anything remarkable or historic at the time. “Not at all,”...
Three-times Olympic gold medallist has progressed from a brilliant point guard to NCAA championship-winning coach with the South Carolina women basketball team and will take charge of the USA Olympic side at Tokyo 2020Among the small handful of warm memories from the Atlanta Olympics, Dawn Staley stands out. Her combination of gnarly competitiveness and glorious skills – a repertoire of feints, no-look passes and behind-the-back smuggles (her “signature play”, she said) – made the little point guard of the USA women’s basketball team a compelling figure as she and her colleagues swept to victory.At the time she was a woman playing what many still saw as a man’s game. In later years I was reminded of her playmaking skills while...
The end of the NBA season is approaching, which means it’s time for fans of teams out of the playoff hunt to start rooting for lossesSomething disastrous happened to the LA Lakers on Sunday: they actually won a game. Before beating the Memphis Grizzlies 108-103, things had been going fairly well for the Lakers: they were on a four-game losing streak, and were playing badly enough that they could have conceivably lost their remaining games of the season. With the win, however, the Lakers’ chances of getting a top three pick in this year’s NBA draft lottery took a huge hit, dropping below 50%. That’s a huge deal, because if their pick ends up being No4 or lower, it will...
Oklahoma City Thunder guard gets his 41st triple-double of the season Crowd chants ‘MVP’ as Westbrook stars against Milwaukee Bucks Russell Westbrook matched Oscar Robertson’s single-season record with his 41st triple-double and helped the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Milwaukee Bucks 110-79 on Tuesday night.Westbrook clinched his seventh straight triple-double on an assist to Taj Gibson with 9:17 left in the third quarter. The crowd stood and chanted “MVP! MVP!” long after the assist. He later waved to the crowd after play stopped . He finished with 12 points, 13 rebounds and 13 assists. Westbrook already has enough points and rebounds to guarantee a double-double for the season. Related: Was Steph Curry's transformation into an NBA supervillain inevitable? The moment....