Appreciating one of the most ridiculous seasons ever

If at any point this year, you found yourself being unimpressed with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s one-man force of nature, just like a test I cram to understand you. If you still feel that way as we close out his record-setting campaign, like the Korean grocer told O-Dog in Menace II Society, “I feel sorry for your mother.”
Let’s be clear from the jump, Russell Westbrook is in the midst of one of the most remarkable basketball seasons ever. I’m talking about in the entire illustrious history of the game!
If you find the urge to minimize what he’s accomplished in averaging a triple-double, while notching 42 of them this year in breaking Oscar Robertson’s previous record of 41 such games in one season, there’s something severely flawed with your comprehension of the sport.

I’ve often found myself scratching my head at folks out here who claim that Westbrook is simply a selfish player who is out here chasing stats.
Let’s begin with the simple axiom that the great Big O, Oscar Robertson, a man who single-handedly instituted a paradigm shift in the sport, is the only player ever to accomplish the feat. No one averaged a triple-double before or since, until Westbrook’s remarkable 2016-2017 season.
Throw out every all-time great you want – Magic, Bird, MJ, Kareem, Wilt, Hakeem, Jerry West, Dr. J, KG, Dirk, Havlicek, The Iceman, Pistol Pete, The Glove, Luke Babbitt (just wanted to see who was paying attention), Clyde Frazier, LeBron, Shaq, Kobe, Timmaaaay, KD, Bill Russell, etc. – none of them did it.
Off the bat, without any real in-depth analysis, Westbrook’s accomplishment over an 82-game marathon of a regular season is mind-boggling. But when you peel back the layers beyond how difficult it is, and view it through the lens of a league of phenomenal size, skill and athleticism, we’re looking at something here that borders on the supernatural.
Far from the misconceived notion held dearly by the game’s uneducated that anyone could chase stats in an easy pursuit of averaging a triple double, is the undeniable truth that pulling it off was recently viewed as next to impossible. The thought among the cognoscenti was that if the most qualified candidates couldn’t do it, those being Jason Kidd, Magic Johnson and LeBron James, then it simply couldn’t be done.
The feat was simply deemed an anomaly of a bygone era, where Oscar Robertson was simply light years ahead of those he competed against. The Big O was the sign on the hoops super-highway that alerted us that players like Magic and LeBron were soon to come

Read More