Armageddon has been postponed in Oklahoma City: Russell Westbrook is staying with the Thunder. Late Wednesday night came word that Westbrook had agreed to a three-year, $86m contract extension with the only professional team he’s ever known – and on Thursday afternoon it was confirmed. Obviously, Westbrook’s extension is a major victory for the Thunder, a franchise still reeling after Kevin Durant’s shocking departure, but it also should be good news for nearly everyone in the NBA, with the exception of anyone who was expecting their team to make a deal for the All-Star point guard.
“I am grateful to extend my contract with the Thunder and continue to play with the only organization that I have played for and have loved being a part of since I was drafted into the NBA,” Westbrook said in a statement. “I’m really excited about moving forward with this group of guys and continuing to play in front of the best fans in the world.”
From a financial perspective, the primary winner in all of this is Westbrook himself, who will be receiving a substantial raise along with some additional job security. By accepting the deal, he has increased his 2016-17 salary from $17.8m to $26.5m. He will get $28.5m in 2017-18, and $30.6m if he picks up his player’s option for 2018-19.
The Thunder will be more than happy to write these checks. Only days ago it seemed like OKC would have no choice but to trade Westbrook, who was set to become a free agent at the end of next season. After Durant left to join the Golden State Warriors, making a historically great team even better, the consensus was that Westbrook would leave for a team with a clearer path to the finals. If that were to happen, the Thunder would have lost MVP candidates in back-to-back seasons while gaining nothing back in return. By trading away Westbrook, the reasoning went, the Thunder would at least acquire assets that would help them start the dismal but sadly necessary rebuilding process.
It’s difficult to overstate just how painful that would have been, not just for the organization but for its fans. A team that was a single win away from upsetting the Warriors and making another trip to the finals was on the verge of starting the very next season as the Philadelphia 76ers 2.0.
Westbrook’s decision to stick with the only franchise he’s ever known has, at the very least, postponed that potential future. In doing so, Westbrook could very well have altered his reputation overnight. Westbrook has received a lot of criticism from Thunder fans over the years – his unorthodox, freewheeling style of play didn’t always mesh well with Durant’s less flashy perfectionism. Now the team, and the city, is truly his.
That’s an exciting development for a significant section of diehard basketball fans who have long wondered how Westbrook, one of the most dominating forces of will in the league, would operate without having to share duties with a perennial MVP candidate. The world got to see a fully unleashed Westbrook when Durant missed much of the 2014-15 season with injuries, and he was arguably the best player in the game during that stretch and ended up winning the scoring title.
Of course, the flip side to that campaign was that despite Westbrook’s superhuman efforts, the Thunder just missed the playoffs. While it’s hard to imagine that happening to the Thunder this upcoming season, at least if Westbrook stays healthy (which is always a concern), it’s fair to question whether this version of the Thunder will have enough talent to go deep into the Western Conference playoffs. (Maybe trading away Serge Ibaka right before free agency wasn’t the wisest call.)
Certainly, the new-look Warriors may end up being too much for OKC, or any other team, to handle, no matter how motivated Westbrook might be to beat his former team-mate on nationally televised games. Even with Tim Duncan’s retirement, Kawhi Leonard and the San Antonio Spurs should continue to be second only to the Warriors in the Western Conference power rankings, and nobody stands to benefit more from the Durant-Westbrook breakup than the Los Angeles Clippers’ duo of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, assuming that Griffin refrains from hurting himself while assaulting co-workers this time around.
Here’s what makes the extension a no-brainer for the Thunder: if the on-court results suggest that the Russell Westbrook Show lineup won’t work as a core for a championship-caliber team in the near future, they could still trade him six months from now, right before the February deadline. That means armchair GMs have plenty of time between now and then to dream up increasingly unlikely trade proposals that would bring Westbrook to their favorite team at minimal cost.
In retrospect, this extension might end up being a best-case scenario for nearly everybody involved: Westbrook gets a pay raise and a chance to be his team’s clear leader, the Thunder keep one of the best players in the league, OKC fans have a reason to keep watching the games, fans of other teams can still delude themselves into thinking they could get Westbrook and, best of all, fans everywhere will be treated to games between the Warriors and the Thunder that are going to be biblical in scope.
