It's been a rough summer for Russell Westbrook.
After a disappointing season in which he faced heavy criticism for the Lakers missing the NBA Playoffs, he's been thrown around in trade rumors for Kyrie Irving and Buddy Hield and parted ways with his longtime agent.
Westbrook is clearly on the decline, but how much juice does he have left in the tank? And how could he prolong his career?
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What is the current state of Russell Westbrook's game?
Westbrook's raw box score stats still look OK. He averaged 18.5 points, 7.4 rebounds and 7.1 assists in 78 games for the Lakers last season.
But his true shooting percentage, a measure of how efficient his shots were, was 51.2 percent, well below the 56.6 percent league-average mark. His shooting at the rim was also worse than the previous season, and his turnover percentage was his third-highest mark outside of his rookie year and his lone season with the Wizards.
Lakers beat reporter Jovan Buha gave his evaluation of Westbrook's season on "The Athletic NBA Show."
"He had his hand checked out last year because he was missing so many layups," Buha said. "The turnovers, the ball-handling stuff, he had some legit issues with his shot, with his ball handling, with his finishing. Defensively, his metrics were awful."
What do the models say about Russell Westbrook's longevity?
Kostya Medvedovsky's DARKO is the best public predictive model out there. One of DARKO's features is a career comparison. Looking at Westbrook's career arc compared to other athletic guards that lasted into their 30s, he follows a similar trend. All experienced a sharp decline in their late 20s, and they weren't able to bounce back.
Of all the players in DARKO's database, Westbrook's career most closely resembles Dwyane Wade, who retired at age 37. Allen Iverson, who like Westbrook struggled to adjust to a lesser role once his burst declined, is another decent comparison.
DARKO's DPM measures overall impact on the court, and Westbrook's roughly minus-1 DPM currently puts him in line with guards like Raul Neto and Cameron Payne. He's still a useful NBA player, but that's a far cry from his MVP days.
DARKO can also estimate retirement age, and it pegs Westbrook, 33, as having another three years left. Only eight of the 605 players last season earned regular rotational minutes at that age or older, including Lakers forwards Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James.
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How Russell Westbrook could extend his career
During a Summer League in-game interview, Lakers coach Darvin Ham shared his plan on how to revitalize Westbrook's career.
"I have film put together of him just being a pitbull on defense in pick-and-rolls, against [dribble handoffs], chasing guys off pindowns, guarding screeners, guarding in the post," Ham said. "And that's where it's gonna start, not only for Russ, but everybody. [Anthony Davis], LeBron, we got to get back to playing defense."
One of the main reasons for the Lakers tallying just 33 wins was their poor defense. They slipped from the best defense in the league in 2020-21 all the way down to 21st last season.
Westbrook has never been a great defender and contributed to that decline. Various advanced stats paint him as below-average. He's in the bottom 10 percent of LEBRON, bottom 20 percent of DARKO and a shade below average in Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM). It's certainly possible for Westbrook to turn up the defensive intensity, but that's a big ask entering his 15th season.
Ham also wants to change Westbrook's offensive role.
"He's gonna have a chance to screen and roll and make plays in the half-roll. He's gonna have a chance to run on the break, slash, get layups," Ham said. "He's gonna have a chance to sprint out to the corner, flatten the defense, get corner threes as well as the things that he already does well in terms of getting the ball and pushing the pace and pushing the tempo."
Darvin Ham speaks on Russ and AD's role on the Lakers pic.twitter.com/u9LkvBO619
— NBA TV (@NBATV) July 11, 2022
As ESPN's Zach Lowe has documented many times, including on his podcast last week, the idea of Westbrook screening for James is appealing. But in practice, it doesn't happen. Westbrook tried that screening plan eight times in one game early in the Lakers' season, then failed to set more than four in any other game for the rest of the year.
Ham's plan of having Westbrook shoot more corner 3-pointers does have some slightly better legs to stand on. Westbrook was a pretty good corner 3-point shooter last season, albeit in a small sample. Per Cleaning the Glass, he connected on 23 of 52 attempts (44.2 percent).
These changes to Westbrook's game all make sense, but getting that level of buy in from him will be the difficult part. He reportedly fired his agent in part because he didn't believe in the role that the Lakers envisioned.
Things have not gone well for stars that lack the self-awareness to adjust to a new role as they age. Westbrook likely has about three years left to figure that out.
