Westbrook the Playmaker
Laker Film Room - Dedicated to the Study of Lakers Basketball
Pete Zayas
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What are Russell Westbrook's strengths as a playmaker? Are there parts of his game as a passer and shot creator that are surprising? Should we be discounting his assist totals because his usage rate is so high? In the first episode of our Westbrook Week series, Pete, Mike, and Darius examine Westbrook the playmaker and what about that aspect of his game excite and concern them. Later, the guys get into how much LeBron may need to adjust in helping foster Russ' playmaking skills and how they envision Russ and Anthony Davis pairing performing.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What do you think about the Laker team now? |
| 0:03.4 | You follow the box scores of the games every day? |
| 0:06.0 | Just the Lakers. |
| 0:07.3 | You're kidding. |
| 0:08.6 | That is really a compliment. |
| 0:12.8 | I was pleased to see you smile at the top bar show because once the game starts, you have a game face. |
| 0:17.8 | You don't smile much out there. |
| 0:20.4 | I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. Correct. What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Film Room podcast, brought to you by the Blue Wire Podcast Network. I'm Pete, joined by Darius and Mike. And welcome to Westbrook Week on the LFR pod. Last week, we talked about some of the new role player additions to the team, but there's nobody who's going to make a bigger difference who's new to the team than Russell Westbrook. |
| 0:43.3 | So much of the team has changed. |
| 0:45.0 | And so many of the mid-tier players, your KCPs, your Cooses, even, you know, Schrooter and Alex being gone, |
| 0:51.6 | all of those guys are kind of consolidated into a Russell Westbrook, |
| 0:55.9 | who I am enormously excited about, I'm nervous about, and beyond anything else I'm curious about. |
| 1:03.8 | His addition to the team is one of the more fascinating basketball questions that I've seen |
| 1:08.7 | the Lakers posed with. And that's what I'm excited about this week is to really get into the weeds of Russell Westbrook's game. And today we're going to |
| 1:14.4 | talk about him as a playmaker, the player that he is with the ball in his hands. And from watching |
| 1:20.1 | so much tape of him, Darius, over the last couple of weeks and really getting into the |
| 1:25.5 | turnovers, but also the assists and the, you know, some of his |
| 1:30.3 | anticipation. I'm really struck by how diverse of a passer he is, for one, and all of the |
| 1:38.5 | different ways that he gets guys open and that he is accurate and delivers passes with velocity. But also from watching his |
| 1:47.3 | game, the way that he goes about creating shots for other guys is very unique around the NBA. |
| 1:53.5 | I would argue that there's really only one Russell Westbrook in the NBA. So from your years of |
| 1:58.3 | watching him from afar, what stood out to you about him as a playmaker |
... |
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