The Sacramento Kings have played some of the worst defense in the NBA this season. But guard Russell Westbrook offered up some confrontational cover for his younger teammates by blasting reporters following the Kings’ latest setback.
The organization is enduring another brutal NBA campaign, with their one-year revival as a playoff team in 2023 disintegrating into yet another rebuild and the worst record in the league less than three years later. But Westbrook insisted during a tense exchange at a March 5 news conference that local media members are contributing to the problems with ‘false comments’ regarding him and other Kings’ players.
‘You guys have a lot of opinions about how we do what we’re doing. What you got,’ Westbrook asked in the aftermath of Sacramento’s 133-123 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. ‘You make a lot of statements and broad statements that you have no context, so where do you get your context from? Are you in practice? Are you at our film session? Are you anywhere around the building?’
Westbrook declined to elaborate when asked for specifics about what sparked his comments, but continued to answer questions with criticism of the team’s media coverage.
When one reporter noted criticism of the team was fair considering its record and status in the bottom-three of the NBA in offensive and defensive rating this season, the 37-year-old guard said backlash against the Kings (14-50) has too often not been about basketball.
‘You guys’ job is to talk about the game, what’s happening in the game, not stir up a bunch of – I don’t want to cuss here because I don’t want to get fined – but stir up a bunch of stuff that, it’s not accurate and that’s my problem,’ Westbrook said. ‘Being in the league awhile, I’ve been able to experience a lot of these times where people outside of our building, outside of the film session, outside of what we do daily, how much work we put in, that is not an easy job to do.
‘Y’all come in, y’all make your comments, and nobody say nothing. But I don’t have to sit back and say nothing,’ Westbrook continued. ‘… As a leader of this team, it’s my job to speak up for the guys in the locker room. We talk about it. They see it. I hear it. Because of the comments you guys make, you got guys thinking about a bunch of random things that has nothing to do with the game. You guys are making false comments about our team and what we’re doing here, and I don’t appreciate that. So my ask is that you respect what we do and we’ll respect what you do.’
Russell Westbrook stats
Westbrook, now finishing up his 18th NBA season, signed a one-year deal with the Kings in October. They are his seventh team in eight seasons after starting his career with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The 2017 NBA MVP winner is averaging 15.3 points, 6.4 assists and 5.3 rebounds in nearly 29 minutes per game in Sacramento this season.