Russell Westbrook is Already Complaining About Coming Off the Bench

Russell Westbrook is already unhappy with the season.

The Golden State Warriors beat the Los Angeles Lakers on NBA opening night. LeBron James and Russell Westbrook both had triple-doubles, but stats don’t matter when you lose. This is probably going to be a common theme this season as everything everyone thought wouldn’t work for the Lakers this season did not work in Game 1. Of course there was plenty of talk about Russell potentially coming off the bench moving forward, last night he was actually in the starting lineup. Apparently he’s not about coming off the bench.

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Russell Westbrook said he “absolutely” believes that coming off the bench against Sacramento contributed to him tweaking his hamstring in that game. “I’ve been doing the same thing for 14 years straight,” he said. “Honestly I didn’t even know what to do pregame.”

— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) October 19, 2022

Westbrook and the Lakers supposedly talked about this. Here’s what Darvin Ham said about Westbrook like four days ago.

“He totally looked me in my eye and said, ‘Yeah, Coach, whatever you need me to do.’ You can’t take that for granted, for a player of his stature to be willing to try something different, something that he’s unaccustomed to. I mean, he started a bunch of games in this league and performed at the highest level in this league. Hell, even being a MVP.”

“So for him to trust us and trust what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to take some notes on — to see if him being in that part of the rotation has any benefit to us as a whole — again, my hat’s off to him. I salute him, because a lot of guys would have had a lot of pushback, even if it’s a preseason game. He totally was selfless in that moment.”

LeBron noted in his postgame comments that they just don’t have enough shooters.

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LeBron James on Lakers’ poor shooting in loss to Warriors: “We’re getting great looks, but it could also be teams giving us great looks. To be completely honest, we’re not a team constructed of great shooting… It’s not like we’re sitting here with a lot of lasers on our team.” pic.twitter.com/VfqWnKcQ3D

— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) October 19, 2022

This is going to be a long season.

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