Photo Credit:AP
When talking about the main responsible for the absolute failure of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2021-2022 NBA season, two are the most mentioned names, coach Frank Vogel and point guard Russell Westbrook, the first was fired on Monday by the team with more titles in NBA history (tied with the Boston Celtics), the second seems to have his days numbered.
Westbrook arrived as the Lakers' luxury reinforcement for this season and the hope was that he would join LeBron James and Anthony Davis to form an unstoppable trio, which for a thousand reasons never happened, but according to the player who was selected in the Draft by the Oklahoma City Thunder, the responsibility for this failure is not his.
Russell Westbrook's words
"When I first got here and just being a person that, unfortunately, people create narratives of me and who I am and what I do, what I believe in that are just not true," Westbrook said on Monday. "I'm always having to, like, prove myself again year after year after year after year which is, to me, just unfair, there's really no reason I have to do that. So, when I first got here, I just felt that I never was given a fair chance just to be who I needed to be to be able to be able to help this team."
Westbrook was highly inconsistent in his performance, despite staying healthy most of the season unlike James and Davis.
The Lakers' big failure
The Lakers fell to 11th place in the Western Conference, out of even the playoffs, and were eliminated several days before the regular season ended.
"I'm big on putting a ton of pressure on myself coming into any situation. Just my play in general, not my best season, just going off my own personal because that's the only thing I go off of regardless the season," Westbrook said. "I know that a lot of people outside of here and media, whatever that may be, have their own expectations of how they see I'm supposed to play or what numbers I'm supposed to put up, but for me personally, I put myself on a very, very high scale and, yeah, I'm not happy with the way the season prevailed from that perspective."
