In the most predictable move of the 2022 NBA offseason, Russell Westbrook exercised his $47.1 million player option to return to the Los Angeles Lakers for the 2022-23 season, league sources confirmed to The Athletic.
Including Westbrook’s salary, the Lakers have $145 million on their books guaranteed for next season with just five players: Westbrook, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Talen Horton-Tucker and Kendrick Nunn. Add in the team options for Stanley Johnson ($2.4 million), Wenyen Gabriel ($1.9 million) and Austin Reaves ($1.6 million), which the Lakers are expected to pick up, according to league sources, and the team is already at $150.8 million in salary with just eight players.
That’s before factoring in the salary for second-round pick Max Christie and the Lakers’ taxpayer midlevel exception (worth approximately $6.5 million annually). The projected salary cap for next season is $122 million, and the projected luxury tax is $149 million. The Lakers are going to easily clear the luxury-tax threshold unless they shed considerable salary, which appears unlikely considering their goals of contending for a championship next season.
Though a Westbrook trade is still possible, the Lakers are currently planning on beginning next season with him on the roster, multiple league sources told The Athletic.
That could change if the Lakers find a team willing to take on Westbrook’s expiring contract without also demanding a future first-round pick (2027 or 2029), which hasn’t been the case thus far. The Lakers would still prefer to trade Westbrook, given the concerns surrounding his declining play, his fit with James and Davis and his willingness to adapt to the team’s desired role for him.
The Lakers would soften their stance for the right return (think Kyrie Irving, multiple starting-level players, or another disgruntled star). But the front office has been telling those around the team for weeks that Westbrook will be a Laker at the start of training camp.
For the Westbrook-Lakers partnership to work, it’s going to take a level of sacrifice that Westbrook has yet to show in his NBA career. The Lakers are confident that new head coach Darvin Ham will be able to relate to Westbrook and get through to him in a way that former head coach Frank Vogel wasn’t able to.
“Russ and I had some really, really great one-on-one convos, man, and the biggest word I think came out of that, those discussions, was sacrifice,” Ham said at his introductory press conference.
Westbrook’s defense has been a point of emphasis for Ham and vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka in recent press conferences. The Lakers need considerably more from the veteran guard on that end, both in terms of effort and execution.
“We have to start on the defensive end in terms of what his role is going to be,” Ham said. “I’m going to expect him to be the same tenacious, high-energy player that he’s been all his entire career.”
Pelinka shared on draft night that he and Ham have already had meetings with Westbrook about his potential role next season. The Lakers have informed Westbrook that if he expects to have a prominent role in the rotation, he’ll have to step up as a defender.
“(We) have just been honest about how we think he fits with this team and what we expect of him next year if he decides to opt in next year,” Pelinka said last week. “And he’s ready to embrace the philosophy of defense first, as well, and he’s made that clear to Darvin and me if he chooses to come back. … But if he comes back, he will be embraced here with open arms, and I want to put a path in front of him to have a successful season.”
It seems unlikely that Westbrook, who will turn 34 at the beginning of next season, is capable of becoming the caliber of defender the Lakers want him to be. Last season, the Lakers often hid Westbrook on an opponent’s worst perimeter scorer. His defensive film and metrics weren’t encouraging, indicating he’s somewhere between below-average and awful.
Westbrook ranked 225th out of 265 guards in D-LEBRON (-1.18), a stat that measures defensive impact per 100 possessions, and he was 224th out of 250 qualifying players in defensive RAPTOR (-2.1), which measures the number of points a player contributes to team defense per 100 possessions, relative to a league-average player. He ranked in the 44th percentile in points per possession allowed, according to Synergy Sports, which is subpar but not crippling. He was also in the 47th percentile for defensive estimated plus-minus, at -0.4.
The outlier metric was defensive real plus-minus, which ranked Westbrook ninth out of 91 point guards (his offense, meanwhile, was a significant problem, ranking 55th out of 91 point guards).
Westbrook’s athletic decline has been more evident on the defensive end, where opponents easily blow by him at the point of attack. For instance, with one rip-through move, Stephen Curry zooms past Westbrook, who tends to reach to try to recover instead of moving his feet and getting back into the fray.
If an opponent had nowhere to hide, or that player was a movement shooter, the Lakers would often stick Westbrook on a wing, where he could use his strength and quickness to take away his opponent’s dribble and make it difficult to get to his spots (similar to when Chris Paul has effectively defended wings well in the past).
For example, Westbrook held his own against Brandon Ingram in the two late-season matchups against New Orleans. He limited Ingram to 6-of-15 shooting over three games, per NBA.com’s tracking data.
Ingram makes this shot, but it’s a tough, contested look. Westbrook stands his ground and pokes at the ball, forcing Ingram, who was initially looking to drive middle, to counter and spin back toward the baseline.
Westbrook was more effective against wing types like Luguentz Dort, Mikal Bridges, Norman Powell and Anthony Edwards. He was cooked by smaller players (Ja Morant and De’Aaron Fox) and elite wing scorers (Devin Booker, Jayson Tatum and DeMar DeRozan).
Westbrook’s off-ball defense is a major problem. He doesn’t rotate well, either misreading his assignment or not bothering to offer resistance in the paint or at the rim. He gets lost around screens, aimlessly hoping a teammate will switch and cover him, while rarely communicating as much.
Teams ruthlessly targeted Westbrook as the season went on, both on and off the ball. Watch as a simple pindown for Tomáš Satoranský leads to a wide-open 3-pointer. Despite D.J. Augustin calling out the screen, Westbrook moves at a snail’s pace, doesn’t properly close out and then throws his hands up, as if it’s someone else’s mistake, after Satoranský cans a trey in his face. (This miscommunication is partially on Augustin, too, but he at least makes an effort.)
Here is another example. In a close game, the Raptors use Westbrook’s man, Chris Boucher, as a screener for Pascal Siakam to trigger Westbrook to switch onto Siakam. Westbrook gives Siakam plenty of space to start his foray toward the rim, and he’s able to spin off of him for a point-blank floater. It’s difficult for the Lakers to fit Westbrook into their smaller lineups because of possessions like this.
Even with Malik Monk, who is still considered a minus defender despite his improvement, on the floor, teams sought out Westbrook, knowing he’d likely make an egregious mistake.
Offensively, Westbrook’s change is more straightforward. The Lakers need him to be more active off the ball, screening and cutting with verve, instead of idly standing in the corners or dunker spots, where he clogs the paint and opponents aren’t as concerned with him.
“We’re gonna talk about our running habits, with the ball, without the ball,” Ham said.
That includes Westbrook running the lane better when he doesn’t have the ball and setting drag screens more frequently. According to Synergy Sports, Westbrook only had seven possessions last season as a roll man. This is one of them. Look at how simple this is: Westbrook screens for James — it’s not even a good screen — and forces a switch. He rolls, and James hits him with a laser pocket pass for a layup against one of the league’s best defenses.
If Westbrook can improve as a shooter, even marginally, that would go a long way in helping some of the Lakers’ spacing issues from last season. But that might be asking too much from him at this stage of his career.
With free agency less than 48 hours away, the Lakers are focusing on two-way wings, according to league sources. Most of the hypothetical scenarios for their taxpayer midlevel exception have been centered on signing a wing or two who could come in and start next to James and Davis. The Lakers believe a player with the right mix of 3-point shooting and multi-positional defense can help strengthen the James-Davis-Westbrook lineups, which opponents outscored by 3.0 points per 100 possessions last season, according to Cleaning the Glass.
“I think guys that will really get after it defensively,” Pelinka said. “I think Darvin is going to prioritize guys who play hard and who compete on every play and compete in the gaps. These are the types of players that we’re going to identify in free agency as well. And I do think, of course, having shooting around our three stars is going to be really important to create space.”
With Westbrook in the fold, the Lakers likely project as a No. 6 or No. 7 seed next season, assuming better health for James and Davis than the past two seasons. But Westbrook’s fit alongside James and Davis offers little encouragement. The Lakers were just 11-10 with the three stars in the lineup (a 43-win pace) in 2021-22.
The Western Conference will be loaded next season. The Warriors should be better with Klay Thompson (the second year post-injury is typically better than the first) and their young lottery picks progressing. The Clippers (Kawhi Leonard) and Nuggets (Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.), who have each made a conference finals appearance in one of the past three postseasons, should be competing for home-court advantage and a possible NBA Finals berth.
Luka Dončić and Morant are only going to get better, leading Dallas and Memphis, respectively, to new heights. The Suns could still be elite, depending on how the Deandre Ayton situation unfolds. New Orleans and Minnesota, both of which were better than the Lakers last season, are on the rise with their young cores. Utah could still be in the mix, depending on what it does with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert.
A healthy James and a healthy Davis still make up arguably the best duo in the West, if not the league. That should give the Lakers a puncher’s chance against anyone in a seven-game series.
But the challenge is they have to get there. They have to survive an 82-game gauntlet that they haven’t been able to survive over the past two seasons. They have to figure out the optimal way to use Westbrook, which has been an unsolvable problem for multiple teams and coaching staffs as he’s regressed over the past half-decade. Barring multiple players taking discounts to play in L.A., the Lakers will likely once again face similar depth issues to last season. They should be able to find value with their taxpayer midlevel exception, but that’s only one player — or two at most.
The Lakers’ quickest — and potentially only — path to contention next season is by trading Westbrook for a third star or multiple rotation pieces. But that’s unlikely … for now. Until that happens, they project as a low-tier playoff team that will have to buck multiple trends from last season to avoid the Play-In Tournament.
(Photo: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)
