While the Russell Westbrook experiment has not gone as planned for the Los Angeles Lakers, the one thing that Westbrook has been all season is durable. Westbrook is currently dealing with his first ailment of the season as he missed the Lakers’ last game against the Portland Trail Blazers with back soreness.
The back injury that Westbrook is currently dealing with is not the cause of something that happened on the court, though… at least according to Westbrook.
Westbrook has one of the most interesting reasons for an injury, which also seems to be a shot at the Los Angeles Lakers and the coaching staff’s decision to bench him. The former NBA MVP blames his back soreness on sitting on the bench. He told the media:
"“I’m not accustomed to sitting down for long stretches and getting up and then, like, moving quickly. It kind of stiffens up a little bit.”"
This has to be one of the pettiest quotes from an NBA player in quite some time. Westbrook has been playing horribly this season and with the Lakers struggling, Frank Vogel has rightfully tried to switch things up and has not included Westbrook in some crunch-time lineups.
It is hard to argue Vogel’s decision from a basketball standpoint considering Westbrook has been a huge liability in crunch time with his poor decision-making on the offensive and defensive side of the court.
Russell Westbrook blaming the Los Angeles Lakers benching him for his back injury makes no sense.
Westbrook is averaging 34.6 minutes per game this season. That is only 1.8 minutes per game fewer than last season and is only 0.1 minutes fewer than his career average. In fact, Westbrook averaged the exact same number of minutes per game in his MVP season with the Oklahoma City Thunder!
To be fair to Westbrook, he has played fewer than 30 minutes in each of the last two games that he has played, logging 29 minutes against the Knicks and 26 minutes against the Bucks. Apparently, Westbrook being subbed out of the third quarter and not appearing in the game again injured him somehow.
This entire Westbrook experiment has been a disaster and at this point fans just have to cross their fingers that Westbrook gets so fed up with his situation in LA that he actually turns down his $47 million player option for next season.
There is an extremely small chance that he does that, but who knows, if Russell Westbrook continues to get benched by the team and his own fans continue to yell at him not to shoot then maybe he gets fed up being in LA and simply wants to leave.