As long as Russ plays for Washington and Scott Brooks, he's going to both obliterate the triple double record and render it meaningless. The Wiz are the perfect team for him -- they play at the fastest pace in the league and play virtually no defense. Every game is a glorified track meet with opportunities galore to pad your stats.
As a general rule, I don't like advanced stats in basketball and prefer to support my judgments with my own eyes, but the advanced numbers on Russ are astounding for a guy who averages a triple double - he's got a PER of 19.3, where 15 is the league average. For comparison Jokic is at 31.7. Russ isn't even top 50 in the league. And that is a stat mostly based on offensive production and rebounding. Do you know how fucked that is that a guy averaging a triple double doesn't rank in the top 50 in the league in PER? It's everything wrong with Russell Westbrook summed up in one meaningless statistic.
I started thinking about some analogous players/situations, and I remembered when Paul Westhead got the Nuggets job and they decided to just say fuck it and run the Loyola Marymount balls to the walls system. There was no defense, just fast breaks and threes - it was like Mike D'Antoni on a crank bender. In some ways, Westhead was ahead of his time. But in his actual time, they went 20-62 and had the worst record in the league. A horribly failed experiment. Michael Adams was a pretty good player, an undersized jitterbug PG who averaged about 15 ppg for his career. That first season under Westhead in 1990-91, he averaged 26.5 PPG and 10.5 APG. during a time in the league where it was extremely difficult to put up those numbers. He finished 6th in the league in scoring, behind MJ (31.5 ppg), Karl Malone, Bernard King, Barkley and Ewing, but ahead of Dominique, David Robinson and Chris Mullin. Adams took 8.5 threes per game while the league average was 7.1 threes attempted per game PER TEAM. And he was terrible at it, shooting 29.6% from behind the line. He put up huge numbers, but he was horribly inefficient on a team that had the worst record in the league. In essence, he was a journeyman who put up insane, bullshit numbers, arguably the most empty calories recorded in NBA history. And here are his stats compared to Russell Westbrook this year:
Per Game
Rk
Player
Season
Age
G
GS
MP
FG
FGA
FG%
3P
3PA
3P%
2P
2PA
2P%
eFG%
FT
FTA
FT%
ORB
DRB
TRB
AST
STL
BLK
TOV
PF
PTS
1
Michael Adams
1990-91
28
66
66
35.5
8.5
21.5
.394
2.5
8.5
.296
6.0
13.0
.459
.453
7.0
8.0
.879
0.9
3.0
3.9
10.5
2.2
0.1
3.6
2.5
26.5
2
Russell Westbrook
2020-21
32
63
63
36.3
8.4
19.1
.441
1.3
4.1
.319
7.1
15.0
.474
.475
4.1
6.2
.651
1.7
9.8
11.5
11.7
1.3
0.4
4.9
2.9
22.2
Per 100 possessions
Rk
Player
Season
Age
G
GS
MP
FG
FGA
FG%
3P
3PA
3P%
2P
2PA
2P%
FT
FTA
FT%
ORB
DRB
TRB
AST
STL
BLK
TOV
PF
PTS
ORtg
DRtg
1
Michael Adams
1990-91
28
66
66
2346
10.1
25.6
.394
3.0
10.2
.296
7.1
15.4
.459
8.4
9.5
.879
1.0
3.6
4.6
12.5
2.6
0.1
4.3
2.9
31.5
113
115
2
Russell Westbrook
2020-21
32
63
63
2289
10.7
24.3
.441
1.7
5.2
.319
9.0
19.0
.474
5.2
7.9
.651
2.1
12.4
14.6
14.8
1.7
0.5
6.2
3.7
28.2
104
110
Advanced
Rk
Player
Season
Age
G
MP
PER
TS%
3PAr
FTr
ORB%
DRB%
TRB%
AST%
STL%
BLK%
TOV%
USG%
OWS
DWS
WS
WS/48
OBPM
DBPM
BPM
VORP
1
Michael Adams
1990-91
28
66
2346
22.3
.530
.397
.372
2.1
8.8
5.2
39.4
2.6
0.1
12.7
28.5
5.8
0.4
6.3
.128
6.0
-0.7
5.3
4.3
2
Russell Westbrook
2020-21
32
63
2289
19.3
.508
.216
.326
4.9
28.5
16.7
48.6
1.7
0.8
18.3
30.5
0.3
3.0
3.3
.069
2.4
0.7
3.2
3.0
Even little Michael Adams, with the most inefficient and anomalous bullshit stats that I could recall in my lifetime was more efficient than Russell Westbrook. Do you know how fucked that is? And I want to like Westbrook. I really do. He plays his ass off. Every night he brings it. His energy and hustle are in the top 1% of NBA players. He's exciting as hell. When he comes off a screen at full speed heading toward the rim, it's terrifying and exhilarating. The guy is incredible. But he plays losing, stupid, inefficient basketball. He's the Wizard of Oz Scarecrow of the NBA. If he only had a fucking brain...