Scott Brooks defends Russell Westbrook

Via Darnell Mayberry of NewsOK.com, Scott Brooks spoke out earlier today about all the negative critiquing and criticizing going on with Russell Westbrook lately. Basically, Brooks summed up what I’ve wasted about 3,000 words on the past couple weeks in just a couple paragraphs.

With Russell, we analyze every possession. I do that myself when we break down the films. But it seems like everybody’s breaking down the film. They’re like in my meetings or in my head. It’s not fair to him. It’s really not fair to him. He’s developed into an All-Star in three years. Not a lot of guys you can say that played the 2-guard spot in college and only for two years and can come in and lead a team that had a bad record three years ago and become an All-Star and make the playoffs twice.

He gets criticized for every bad game. He’s not the only player that has a bad game. He’s not going to be the only player in the future that has bad games. But the only thing I can say about that is Russell knows what he needs to do. And we talk to him and he’s coachable and he wants to get better. He controls his improvement, and he has done that. He doesn’t listen to the critics because you can’t. You have to be hard on yourself and he is. And I’m hard on him. And we have an understanding that we only get better when he continues to improve and he has improved for three straight years. And that’s all I ask for.

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He tries, he cares, he wants to get better and those are the issues I look at with Russell. He’s not a traditional point guard but who is now? I mean, Derrick Rose is the MVP of the league and he leads their team in scoring. He takes the most shots. He’s good. That’s how they play and that’s how they win, but that’s point guards now. Point guards are like that now.