All Ball Sports: Lakers, Clippers Hallway Series? If so, thank Westbrook
by Paul Teetor
All hail Russell Westbrook.
The Lakers and Clippers have never met in the playoffs — but that statistically unlikely circumstance could change this year.
And if it should happen, much of the credit has to go to Westbrook, the former NBA Most Valuable Player who was traded away by the Lakers two months ago, bought out by the Utah Jazz before he could play a single game for them, and then signed to a minimum-wage contract with the Clippers, all in the space of a single week.
And now, most improbably, a Lakers-Clippers hallway series is the tantalizing prospect that emerged in the wake of Sunday’s double-upset playoff special: the seventh seeded Lakers beat the second seeded Memphis Grizzlies 128-112 early Sunday afternoon and a few hours later the fifth-seeded Clippers beat the fourth seeded Phoenix Suns 115-110.
It was a day of raucous celebration for LA hoops fans as both teams took a 1-0 lead in their first-round playoff series. It was also a day of dreaming about future glory for fans of both teams, and a day that could not have happened without Westbrook changing LA teams back in February.
Start with the Lakers: they got off to a 2-10 start this season with Westbrook, the uber-athletic but petulant, selfish and self-important guard out of Leuzinger High in Lawndale, and UCLA who spent most of his time screwing up the team’s chemistry and cohesion.
His hero-ball style of play – hogging the ball, reckless bull-rushes to the basket, taking crazy long-distance shots when the other team was begging him to take those very same shots – was driving LeBron James, his wingman Anthony Davis and Lakers Coach Darvin Ham crazy.
The bad chemistry Westbrook’s toxic approach created on and off the court reached its peak the night LeBron broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record when Westbrook got into a heated argument with Coach Ham in the half-time locker room.
Westbrook’s blatant sulking and unhappiness took the shine off LeBron’s big night, and proved to be the last straw for the team’s management, which convinced Utah to take him off their hands by offering their precious 2027 first round draft pick. That’s how badly they wanted him out of their locker room and off their roster.
Coach Ham had described his approach to handling Westbrook as “Let Russ be Russ.” The result was what we will call Laker Russ: undisciplined, reckless, selfish and oblivious to the chaos he was causing.
The Westbrook trade and a couple of other trades the Lakers made at the trade deadline substantially reconfigured the team’s roster. The Lakers front office and their mainstream media minions have been pushing the narrative that the team got better because of the new players.
But of the five new players, only one – point guard D’Angelo Russell – has played a significant role, and he has been up and down in his two months with the team.
No, the Lakers second-half improvement was much more a case of addition by subtraction. Just by getting Westbrook out of town – or at least out of their locker room, as it turned out – the Lakers chemistry and cohesion improved greatly because LeBron stepped back into his undisputed alpha dog role and AD regained his comfortable sidekick role.
The proof was in Sunday’s monumental upset of the Grizzlies, which ended with a 15-0 Lakers run to close out the game.
While LeBron finished with 21 points and 11 rebounds and AD finished with 22 points and 12 rebounds with seven blocked shots, it was two players who were on the roster before the last-minute flurry of trades who led the Lakers to victory.
Country boy Austin Reaves, who grew up 100 miles from where the game was played in Memphis, finished with 23 points and hit on three of his five 3-pointers. He is a true Lakers success story. After four years of good-but-not-great college ball and going undrafted in the 2021 NBA draft, the Lakers signed him to a two-way contract.
It was basically a make good contract: if you show us something in summer league and training camp we’ll keep you around on our G League team, the South Bay Lakers, and try to develop you into a legit NBA player.
Well, Reaves developed faster than anyone – including the Lakers scouts and coaches — could have imagined and earned LeBron’s stamp of approval when he hit a buzzer-beating three-point game winner mid-way through his rookie season.
After the win over the Grizz in Reaves’ first-ever playoff game Sunday afternoon, LeBron doubled down on that prior endorsement.
“I knew from the first practice what we had when we grabbed him, that he wasn’t going to be a two-way player for long,” James said. “Then a couple of weeks went by, I knew he was going to get a guaranteed contract at some point. I just know, I’ve been around the game long enough to know great basketball IQ players and I know the type of players that fit with my game and I knew Austin would be that right away.”
The other scrub-turned-star Sunday was Rui Hachimura, who came to the Lakers in a little-noticed trade with the Washington Wizards on January 23 for seldom-used guard Kendrick Nunn.
The 6-foot-8 Hachimura had a good career at Gonzaga and was a 2019 lottery pick – ninth overall — by the Wizards with an inside-outside game, but he never really developed for the Wizards. The problem was that while he was strong around the basket, in today’s modern pace-and-space NBA game you have to be able to hit a good percentage of your three-point shots to stay on the floor. Hachimura, despite his impressive athletic gifts, never reached that level with the Wiz.
When he came to LA, the Lakers smartly assigned him to assistant coach Phil Handy, one of the best shot doctors in the business. He fixed Hachimura’s outside shot – a wider, more stable base, higher release point, hold the finish longer – and it paid off big-time on Sunday.
Hachimura connected on five of his six three-point shots, had several emphatic dunks, and finished with 29 points and six rebounds. If he plays that way for the rest of the Lakers playoff run, he has practically guaranteed that the Lakers will sign him to a lucrative, long-term contract in the off-season. Players with his size and skill set are hard to find.
The other factor that went into this Lakers upset was their continued run of good luck. It started in the play-in game with Minnesota, when the two best defenders for the Timberwolves – center Rudy Gobert and forward Jalen McDaniels – had to miss the game. Gobert was suspended for one game for punching his teammate Kyle Anderson during a sideline confrontation, and McDaniels broke his hand punching the wall in a fit of frustration.
As it was, the Lakers still had to go to overtime to beat Minnesota and get into the playoffs. Their run of good luck – or rather, the other team’s bad luck — continued Sunday when the Grizz’ star point guard, Ja Morant, tried to dunk over AD, crashed to the floor, and hurt his right hand – his shooting hand — so badly that there are serious doubts he will be able to play in game two Wednesday night.
While the Lakers pulled off their opening round upset with their new-found chemistry inspired by Westbrook’s departure, the Clippers won their game with a down-to-the-wire performance orchestrated by the very same Westbrook.
We’ll call this new and improved version Clipper Russ.
When he came to the Clippers, Coach Tyron Lue laid out the facts of life: they wanted the Westbrook who is a great defender because he’s a super athlete, who is a great passer because he can penetrate into the paint and find open shooters instead of hoisting up no-chance crazy shots. Most of all, they wanted the former MVP who can make his teammates better players by sharing the rock and getting them good shots.
And for the most part, that’s how he played for his first two months with the Clippers. Of course, he knew it was his last chance to stick in the league, and for a proud guy like him the prospect of being run out of the NBA was too much to bear. That’s what it took to motivate him to change his game.
But for some unknown reason it was Laker Russ who showed up for the first three quarters of Sunday’s game against the Suns. He began the game taking bad shots and missing most of them. But instead of stopping, he kept shooting and kept missing and eventually wound up connecting on only three of 19 shots. In other words, he shot 17 percent, and normally that would kill his team.
But there were two things working in the Clippers favor. First, even though their number two star Paul George was still out with a knee injury, their superstar Kawhi Leonard played his best game of the year with 38 points, five rebounds and five assists.
Whenever one of the Sun’s trio of stars – Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul – would put the Suns ahead, Leonard would quickly answer and keep the Clips in the game.
And second, perhaps because Westbrook’s old OKC teammate Durant is now on the Suns and Westbrook wanted to get some kind of psychic revenge for their acrimonious parting, he played with a ferocious energy beyond even his usual maniacal state.
And it paid off big-time in the last two minutes. First, he got two offensive rebounds that he literally pulled out of the hands of the Suns and found teammates for open shots that kept them in the game.
And finally, in the last minute, he made the play of the game when Booker drove to the hoop with Westbrook all over him. First Westbrook blocked his shot, then grabbed the ball out of mid-air and as he was falling out of bounds he fired the ball off Booker and out of bounds to keep the ball for the Clippers.
It was a play that is tried on every court on every level from Live Oak Park to the NBA, but it rarely succeeds because the other player can see it coming and ducks out of the way.
But this time Westbrook threw the ball at Booker with such force that he couldn’t avoid it bouncing off his body and out of bounds. The Clippers got the ball back and ran out the final 10 seconds for the victory.
After the game, both Kawhi and Coach Lue heaped praise on Westbrook for helping win the game despite his horrid shooting.
“Making winning plays, getting deflections, offensive rebounds…It’s playoff basketball,” Kawhi said. “He didn’t have his best night shooting, but he impacted the game in different ways.”
Lue said he told him to just keep playing hard despite missing so many shots.
“I told him he brings us way more than shooting and scoring the basketball,” Lue said. “He was phenomenal tonight.”
Predictions: If Memphis star Ja Morant can’t come back close to 100 percent, the Lakers will win that series in five or six games and advance to play the winner of the San Francisco-Sacramento series. And if Leonard plays the way he did Sunday night, and if Laker Russ does not make another surprise appearance, the Clippers will beat the Suns in seven games and play the winner of the Denver-Minnesota series.
That’s a lot of ifs that have to happen to get that far, but if they do after that it could be the Lakers vs. the Clippers in the Western Conference Finals.
Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
That’s what being a sports fan is all about.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor