During Westbrook’s mid-season hot streak, things were fine. He swapped out the contested mid-range pull-up jumpers for relentless rim attacks possession after possession. It was working. Following January, he looked like a surefire All-NBA player, flirted with a 32-8-7 line over a two-month span, had the ball more and more and essentially became the offensive focus during that time, with Harden being a 1B to his 1A.
Prior to the Orlando bubble in July, Westbrook contracted COVID-19 and also sustained a quadriceps injury, two factors that likely affected his subpar playoff performance, part of the second-round, five-game exit at the hands of the Lakers — a defeat which sources believe is the real reason Harden and Westbrook wanted to leave.
Sources close to Westbrook believe the nine-time All-Star was being made out to be a scapegoat of sorts for Houston’s playoff meltdown, with his poor showing making him an easy target — eerily similar to what happened with Paul and Harden following the Rockets’ Game 6 collapse against the Warriors in 2019.
In a realistic basketball situation with a championship as the long-term goal, sources said, Harden and Westbrook simply couldn’t co-exist on the floor. This isn’t a knock on their personal relationship, an aspect that has been misconstrued in recent weeks. Harden and Westbrook have a deep-rooted friendship that spans over decades, but the NBA is a business. Individual legacies are at stake and winning a championship seems more unlikely by the year. At 31 and 32, respectively, Harden and Westbrook aren’t exactly NBA spring chickens anymore, either.
Nine years ago, when both players were in Oklahoma City, this awkward pairing might not have mattered. Westbrook and Durant shared the spotlight with Harden excelling as the spark plug off the bench. Since then, dynamics have changed. Both Harden and Westbrook have won MVPs, a host of personal accolades, and have established brands for themselves. This, combined with the never-ending clock that is Father Time, made a split almost inevitable.
How did this deal get done?
As The Athletic previously reported, negotiations between the Wizards and Rockets came to an initial stalemate because Houston wanted Washington to attach draft picks to Wall, relieving the burden of a pricy contract and significant injury history. On top of the Achilles and heel issues, Wall also missed 41 games in 2017-18 after having bone spurs removed from his knee. But the Wizards were unwilling to give up draft capital willy nilly. Starting last summer, when current GM Tommy Sheppard took over, this team has steered away from sacrificing chunks of its future to satisfy short-term upgrades. It went into this offseason with a goal to end a two-season playoff-less streak. But it wasn’t trying to throw away years of picks or young players to make that happen.
Before the Rockets signed free-agent big man Christian Wood, they inquired about Wizards center Thomas Bryant, sources said. That, of course, didn’t take.
Wednesday afternoon, the two sides came to a compromise: the Wizards would include a protected pick that’s far out into the future, not going to Houston before 2023, the year after Westbrook’s current contract ends (assuming he picks up his $47 million player option for the 2022-23 season). The pick is lottery protected that year, meaning if the Wizards make the playoffs, it goes to the Rockets. If they don’t, they keep it. Well, if Washington is making the postseason three years from now, that probably means this trade, in some fashion, helped it get there. A middling first-rounder would be a reasonable price to pay.
The pick lessens in protections over the years, but it can’t at any point be higher than No. 9 and will turn into two-second rounders if the Rockets don’t get it by 2026. If the Wizards are bad enough, they won’t lose a first-rounder at all. They didn’t burn down tomorrow just to facilitate a point guard upgrade today. The Rockets, meanwhile, still have realistic hopes of snagging a first-rounder for the higher-risk player.
During the course of Houston’s trade talks around the league, Wall was singled out as the most intriguing option on the market. The Rockets had no interest in a major downgrade, as that would defeat the purpose of smoothing things over with Harden and might also signal a rebuild. They may be parting with a former MVP in the trade, but they still consider Wall a high-upside acquisition — as long as he can stay healthy. People who have seen Wall rehab over the offseason say he looks quick and strong. The fan club includes Kevin Durant, who the five-time All-Star has scrimmaged with often over the last couple of months and who declared just this week that Wall “looked great. … I’m excited for him. He’s back.”
Whether Wall can sustain his patented burst for 82 games (or for 72 during this condensed season) after a two-year layoff is anyone’s guess. But he’s still quick, still explosive, they say.
Given the Rockets’ confidence in their training and medical staff, there was a strong backing that this was the deal they should pursue. The contracts of Wall and Westbrook are nearly identical and there was potential for better on-court chemistry.
After acquiring up to three first-round picks since the offseason began, the Rockets now believe they have replenished the stock enough and have the necessary flexibility to become major players at the trade deadline. Houston wants to continue to surround the roster with more talented players, an offseason after adding Wall, Wood, Cousins, and David Nwaba.
Wall fits the profile of players that Houston likes to target: a talented star with a low market. The Rockets also believe that he is a better natural fit to Harden than Westbrook was. Wall is less of a score-first guard and more of a natural playmaker and floor general. Westbrook and Harden are such gifted scorers at similar positions in their own right that putting them together became a challenge at times.
Bradley Beal. (Photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
What should we expect from the Wizards?
The Wizards believe Westbrook and Bradley Beal, the league’s second-leading scorer from this past season, will fit well. Westbrook is expected to meet his new teammates for the first time Friday. Of course, not every face will be fresh. Wizards coach Scott Brooks, who coached him in Oklahoma City from 2008 to 2015, raves about the former MVP every chance he gets. It’s not just Brooks, either. Assistant coach Robert Pack was in OKC, as well, and worked with Westbrook when the point guard was young. Pack is known best for his work with point guards — including Wall, of course — and also had a significant hand in forming the Wizards’ surprisingly formidable offense last season, which spiked into the top 10 for much of the year before roster attrition depressed it to the middle of the pack.
The team believes that even with Westbrook’s distinct playing style, it will be able to carry principles of its 2019-20 offense over to this season, namely the movement and dribble hand-offs that Beal operated so fluidly within. Beal received more dribble hand-offs than any other NBA player last season, according to information tracked by Second Spectrum and supplied to The Athletic.
Washington was proceeding the same way when it anticipated Wall would return, too, designing ways for an often-stoic point guard to mesh better with Beal while he was off the ball, whether through spot-up shooting, running around screens or crafty cutting. Wall and Beal spoke enthusiastically about how excited they were to try out this new way of playing together — with Beal, who has two years remaining on his contract before he can become a free agent, even stating multiple times that one of the reasons he wanted to stay in D.C. was because of his desire to give it another go with his backcourt mate of almost a decade. As The Athletic previously reported, numerous people in the know have either insinuated or explicitly said the two were overselling their desire to play together. We’ll never know if it would have worked, though Westbrook’s presence doesn’t completely change the plan.
The Wizards will cook up ways to try him in similar actions, too, but this is, of course, the rawest of stages.
Ultimately, Washington knows Westbrook’s strengths. He can operate in pick-and-rolls with space. The Wizards have the shooters, including a world-class sniper in Bertans and starting center Thomas Bryant, to put around him. They see the success Paul George had with Westbrook in Oklahoma City, as well. The best season of George’s career was his second in OKC, when he finished third in MVP voting. The lanky wing can slither around screens and take over pick-and-roll duties in a way that could inspire actions for Beal, who boasts a similarly versatile offensive game.
Of course, the Westbrook-George relationship ended after two years and two first-round playoff exits. The Wizards don’t want the postseason only because they haven’t tasted it since 2018. It runs deeper than that. They know — no matter how many times Beal publicly says he wants to retire a Wizard — that a 30-point scorer doesn’t voluntarily spent his career with one organization if he’s piling up 50-loss seasons. Beal is 27 and at the beginning of his prime. They believe Westbrook makes them better. They think two hyper-competitive personalities will harmonize. They wouldn’t have made this deal if they thought otherwise.
What should we expect from the Rockets?
Before the trade went down, Stephen Silas was actively formulating schemes on how best to utilize Harden and Westbrook together, sources say. Part of the said plan (on top of the addition of Wood and his versatile, floor-spacing ability) included putting Westbrook in better half-court situations and getting Harden out and away from double teams. Harden would operate off the ball more, too, sources said. Houston was also excited about pairing Westbrook with new signee Demarcus Cousins, although it’s unclear how NBA-ready his body is. It would be a different and more versatile style of play than what was seen under D’Antoni.
At the root of Westbrook’s desires to leave was the juxtaposition of unfamiliarity and basketball mortality. In Oklahoma City, he had grown accustomed to a certain style of play. A ball-dominant, point-guard centric flair that entailed other players learning to play with him, not the other way around. Outside of the normal structure that teams have, Westbrook took the shots he wanted to take when he wanted to take them. The Thunder were his team.
Silas understands that there are differences between Westbrook and Wall but some of the same principles still apply. He will still put Wall in scenarios where he’ll be the lead ball-handler as well as have him play off the ball when Harden has it in his hands. If Silas’ word holds true, Houston will have a number of new offensive wrinkles and actions designed to keep defenses off balance and the five Rockets engaged. Wall will be able to either enter into high pick-and-rolls with Wood or Cousins with the ability of both of those bigs to pop. He’ll be able to run actions with Harden directly or the former MVP can serve as a connector, cutter, and even a screener.
“To have John Wall pushing the ball up the floor and either passing ahead to running wing or keeping it and getting into the paint, making all the great passes that he’s made over his career that is accentuated by the way that I want to play,” Silas said Thursday.
“It changes it in a couple of ways. Obviously, if it weren’t for Russell Westbrook I probably wouldn’t have this job. So the fact that he vouched for me in the interview process was one of the first things that I thought of when the trade was made. The second part of it is how dynamic John Wall has been in his career and some of the nightmares that I’ve had trying to defend him in pick-and-roll and all the passes he’s able to make. When I was in Charlotte, we were in the same division so we saw him four times a year. With his size, speed, passing, and ability to get to the rim, there are so many things that you can do especially now that the game has changed. Very excited to have him on the team and defensively he can get after it — he can switch, he has the size and physicality. Definitely excited that he’s going to be a part of what we’re doing here moving forward.”