Russell Westbrook is one of the absolute best players in the league. The Oklahoma City Thunder point guard has turned heads over the last few years, especially due to his relentless play on the court. The seemingly always angry Westbrook has turned a continuously playing hard style into a very successful style.
Despite how good Westbrook is now, he was not always a top prospect nor was he very highly recruited out of high school. While scouts may not have seen much from him, one person knew that the point guard would be great from a very early age.
After the Los Angeles Lakers’ close loss to the Thunder on Friday, Kobe Bryant spoke at length about Westbrook who had an incredible game in leading his team to victory. The NBA legend spoke about Westbrook’s relentless play and how good he has become.
The following has been transcribed from a video recorded by Donald Green:
“We literally just showed up there [UCLA] and played pickup basketball. I was like ‘who the hell is this kid?’ He plays exactly the same way. I mean he was everywhere and a relentless competitor. I’d never even heard of him. So it’s kind of shocking to me sometimes kind of looking at scouts and what the hell they’re looking at. This guy was this way when he was sixteen years old.”
Shout out to Kobe Bryant for calling out some scouts.
This is a pretty phenomenal story. We now know that Westbrook does not back down from anyone and is always playing harder than everyone else. But the fact that he was doing this at the age of sixteen while playing against one of the greatest NBA players of all time is pretty amazing. Kobe is probably one of the players Westbrook enjoyed watching and modeled his game after as he grew up. To hear Kobe praise him so highly is pretty cool in itself.
These days Westbrook is one of the best basketball players in the world. It appears, however, that even at the age of sixteen it was apparent he could get to this level.
