Russell Westbrook Fashion Russell Westbrook High School Highlights

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Newcastle Loftier Schoolhouse sits 25 minutes south of Oklahoma City, jutting out from the flat country and abruptly buttressing itself, like an invasion of modernity on the edge of sleepy Route 62. Within the gym is an inferno of a man with glowing eyes. He is non skinny. Cut from marble, in fact. He is strong and fast. His manufactured anger intimidates and rivets.

His teeth clamp. His brow furrows. His expletives are reckless poetry. You wonder if he's having fun. The Thunder's annual Bluish and White scrimmage which kicks off their training campsite is more than of a mode to connect with fans than anything.

Russell Westbrook Jr. argues every call.

Layne Murdoch Jr./Getty Images

He is growing increasingly frustrated with Thunder ability forward Serge Ibaka. It's the first time they've played organized basketball game together since the Thunder'south regular-season finale, and the pick-and-gyre defense is understandably rusty.

"Man, we need to become small or something with all the dumb due south--t Serge is doing," says Westbrook. "How hard is it?"

Durant puts his large right paw on the back of Westbrook's head to at-home him. He does this often.

Assistant Darko Rajakovic is coaching the White team and tries to soothe Westbrook.

"What practice yous need me to do?" Rajakovic says. "Tell me, just tell me."

Westbrook doesn't reply.

Maurice Cheeks steps in.

"What's the problem?" the Thunder assistant coach asks with a certain kind of ease.

"Ain't nobody helping!" Westbrook implores. "If I go over, somebody better help my ass out! That'south why the f--1000 I go nether."

"But you lot gave up a three going under," reminds Cheeks.

Westbrook considers this for several seconds, "F--k it."

He checks himself dorsum in.

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Russell Westbrook at the dawn of his NBA career. Getty Images

Compton Avenue is indestructible. It has to be.

There is a beauty to this ragged asphalt ribbon. A rhythm. A history. It carries unfair burdens. Information technology knows pains.

But not all pain is an evil. Sometimes it's annexed to some odd form of hope you can't empathise if you're not from here.

This is a birthplace, after all.

This is where Russell Westbrook comes from.

The child with the high cheekbones and contoured jaw—who traffics in a peculiar blend of artificial anger and tight-fitting clothing—knows this concrete. He knows all this rhythm, history and pain.

His sunglass line is sold at Barney's. His Vine-inducing dunks abound ever more daring. His passion confounds. His meteoric ascent on the hardwood and place in pop culture were predicted by no one. Not even him. None of it tin can be accurately explained.

Compton Avenue is a offset. Or Jesse Owens Park. Or the living room of his parents' pocket-size apartment.

"I never thought I was going to play in the NBA," says Westbrook. "A lot of people who are in the NBA now accept been good since they were viii. I wasn't good until I was 17."

Every superhero has an origin story. With whatsoever good hero, reluctance is expected—just so long as information technology gives way to ambition and resolve.

Everyone is from somewhere. Where you're from is the one thing you cannot change virtually yourself. Information technology's a vital piece of personal DNA as indestructible every bit Compton Artery. It has a one-half-life of forever.

Burnt-out buildings, liquor stores with steel-caged doors and avenues perpetually bathed in blue and ruby flashing lights don't diminish or define those who sprung from this sort of wilderness.

Sometimes it'southward just home.

"Information technology was difficult for me to become the person I am," he says. "Growing upward in Los Angeles taught me that. I have a lot of pride where I'm from."

Swing downwards Compton Avenue and hang a left on 41st Street, and you'll come up to it: the identify where the journeying began.

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Russell Westbrook as a senior at Leuzinger High in Lawndale, Calif. Getty Images

The Son Also Rises

Ben Howland walked into the one-time gym at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, California, at 6:thirty in the morning. The UCLA head basketball coach was excited because he had never laid eyes on Westbrook in person. The players had not however arrived, and exterior of Howland, the only other person in the gym was a scrawny child sweeping the floor.

Westbrook wasn't a prized recruit. Certainly not one of Howland's precious McDonald'due south All-Americans. He had heard about his speed. Nearly how zealous a defender he was. He'd be a skilful fill-in to his freshman stud Darren Collison, he thought. The student section at Pauley Pavilion would surely grow to love him.

A few minutes after, Leuzinger caput coach Reggie Morris met him. The two made a bit of pocket-sized talk, and Morris assured him he was going to like what he saw from Westbrook.

"Where is Russell?" Howland asked.

"Right there," replied Morris. "Pushing the broom."

When Westbrook was done with the floor, he gathered his teammates in the locker room. He huddled them up and proceeded to fire them up as if it were a packed gym on game dark. Westbrook ran out onto the floor with his teammates in tow and began organizing drills and a layup line.

"My kickoff introduction to Russell Westbrook was as a leader," says Howland. "It was pretty impressive."

When Howland returned to campus, he walked up to UCLA assistant omnibus Kerry Keating, who had been spearheading Westbrook'southward recruitment.

"This kid'due south not a point guard," said Howland.

"I never said he was a point guard," responded Keating. "I just said he could play."

The truth was they didn't know what they had. Just they knew they liked him. Keating had quietly been eyeing him for a couple years, which seemed to make no sense to his colleagues.

UCLA assistant Donny Daniels wondered why until he first saw Westbrook play in a high school tournament against rival Westchester. He shot 2 airballs, fabricated poor decisions, got frustrated and forced the action. It was the kind of game that loses kids scholarships earlier they have them.

Daniels came away with one thought: "This child can play."

His motor, intensity and competitiveness afflicted nearly every play of the game. His length and speed immune him to dominate defensively. Nigh of his errors came when he tried to get others involved. His rotation, lift and release on his jump shot were improve than expected. He pigeon on the floor.

"Yous don't judge a kid on a bad game," says Daniels. "You could see then much potential he had. He could just pour the ball in the handbasket. But man he was raw."

Keating saw Westbrook play six times in his senior year, the maximum allowed by the NCAA at the time. He made sure his dad saw him at games—that was like shooting fish in a barrel since there were no other scouts in that location. He'd endure awful games that took hours to go to.

He had to bargain with questions nigh why he was recruiting a 5'9" guard who couldn't shoot.

"He was this rugrat who played like a bat out of hell," recalls Keating. "He was like a crazed canis familiaris."

Westbrook's frenetic style had been honed and developed in big role by his father, an intense, career pickup baller, who would shepherd his son around town to gyms and parks to shoot jumpers and run him through drills he invented.

"They would practice military drills," says Jordan Hamilton, a beau Compton native and onetime first-round typhoon pick. "Information technology was all work-ethic stuff."

He had the boy do pushups, situps, countless sprints and agility drills in sandboxes. He hammered abode the idea that he had to work for everything he was ever going to go.

"Outwork them," his father would say. "Outwork them all."

Plus, Westbrook wasn't but minor, he was slight. If he turned sideways, he'd disappear. He was invisible to virtually anyway.

He was easy to overlook. Easy to uncertainty. Like shooting fish in a barrel to dismiss. His father taught him to use that hurting and frustration. To detest the way it felt. To never be denied. He began to shape his heed as much as his game. It took the two of them to lift the bedrock-sized flake and place it squarely on Russell'south skinny shoulders.

"I never really worried about what people thought about me," Westbrook explains. "That's just how I retrieve. It'due south how I am. I think if you practise something, you should ain it."

The family didn't take much. They simply ever lived in one-time apartments in sketchy neighborhoods. His mother, Shannon, would exhaustively search for affordable wearing apparel for her boys.

"My mom used to dress me," says Westbrook. "She picked out my clothes and kept me looking fresh. I didn't have a lot, but everything I had she bought me."

Westbrook dabbled in football merely wanted a basketball game scholarship in a higher place all else. Just the neighborhood has a way of irresolute plans. So Compton-bred Russ Sr., who had a few scrapes with the police force himself, took preventative measures.

As a teenager, Westbrook spent an inordinate amount of time indoors, anything his parents could do to keep him away from the streets.

"I was going to Washington at the time, and it was a pretty bad school," says Westbrook. "My dad didn't want me to go at that place, then I transferred to Leuzinger which actually wasn't much improve."

But it did have Morris, who was one of the few people Westbrook Sr. allowed to exist involved with his son's development.

He entered as a 5'8" freshman with size-13 feet and didn't first on varsity until his junior year. None of the major camps or elite AAU squads extended invitations. Westbrook avoided paper clippings of other players' success and barely followed local basketball game.

"I didn't look up to the top players in the city," he says. "Honestly, I only never paid attending to it. I wasn't large into going to games or following players; I was just in the firm trying to stay out of trouble."

The culmination of a decade of drills and an unexpected growth spurt—he shot up five inches before his senior year—was a monster season of 25.one points, 8.7 rebounds and 3.1 steals per game in which he was named third-squad All-State.

Keating's dogged persistence and efforts to gain trust in the Westbrook family unit were nigh to pay off in the form of a sleeper signee with serious upside.

But there was a trouble.

Jordan Farmar held the central to Westbrook's future equally a Bruin. There was no getting around it. The but way a scholarship would become available was if Farmar went pro. If he didn't, Keating's efforts would go upwards in smoke.

Howland thought Farmar would stay.

"I don't retrieve we're gonna need Westbrook," the passenger vehicle would say.

But Keating knew Farmar was dead-assail becoming a pro. He would square off with Darren Collison in exercise to show his toughness and prove he was an blastoff male person.

Howland and Keating jumped in the banana's 5 Serial BMW—the first new car he'd always endemic—and headed downward the congested 405 looking for the Hawthorne exit. Soon they were hanging a right on Crenshaw and constitute the tidy two-bedroom apartment the family called abode, where Russell shared a room with his brother, Raymond.

In the living room, there were trophies and family unit pictures on the wall.

When the coaches arrived, Russell sat on the couch in between his parents wearing shorts and flip-flops. His legs were stretched out in front end of him. His easily folded in his lap. He barely spoke a word.

As Howland outlined all the school had to offer, Keating had another thought.

"I couldn't believe how large his hands and anxiety were," he says. "This child is gonna abound even more!"

Westbrook was unheralded, but he wasn't unknown. He had been getting serious interest from Arizona Land and made an official campus visit. On the day he returned, Farmar alleged for the draft.

Westbrook went straight to UCLA and signed his alphabetic character of intent.

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Westbrook and partner in crime Kevin Durant at Team USA grooming camp. Getty

The players were divided in teams of three. LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant were on the left side of the floor. Westbrook, Stephen Back-scratch and Chris Paul were on the other.

Nearly the unabridged basketball universe had descended on the practice gym on the campus of UNLV for Team USA's mandatory three-24-hour interval minicamp in Baronial.

John Calipari sat on the sideline with a wide grin, sandwiched between ii of his most contempo No. 1 picks, John Wall and Anthony Davis.

Blake Griffin was on the courtroom's opposite basket hoisting pull-upwardly mid-range jumpers. His college coach, Jeff Capel, was rebounding for him.

Caput coach Mike Krzyzewski roamed from station to station, stopping to chat up various basketball game power brokers and offer a word or two of encouragement.

The three-man mega-teams were engaged in a heated shooting drill that seemed to escalate in intensity with each phase. The catch-and-shoot portion from short corner 3 wasn't even close, as Curry didn't miss a single shot.

One dribble to shoot out of a triple-threat position was a landslide, considering that'due south Melo and KD's bread and butter. They won easily.

Next came turnarounds from the mid-post after communicable an entry pass. Durant swished a fadeaway. And then CP3 lofted in a rainbow from his side. Back and forth they went, shouting barbs across the lane at one another, upping the intensity. LeBron made sound effects whenever Melo would hit bottom.

Westbrook was upwardly. He collected an entry pass. He braced himself with his back to the basket. Newly minted Thunder banana Monty Williams drew the assignment of applying token pressure level. Westbrook drilled Williams with an elbow, pivoted and collection his shoulder into the winded USA Basketball game assistant coach.

Williams stepped back and shot Westbrook a sideways glance.

Only the day before, in another drill, they had a similar clash, with Williams reminding Westbrook it was a non-contact army camp. But with bragging rights on the line he went full Westbrook.

"I don't give a s--t," replied Westbrook. "Let'southward go."

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The Blizzard of Westwood

Westbrook had always kept a tight inner circumvolve, but he fabricated friends easily at UCLA.

He was just 17 years sometime when he stepped onto the sprawling Westwood campus and was eager to learn about something outside of the boundaries of South Los Angeles.

In the summertime earlier his freshman season, his transition was eased when he met a basketball recruit named Nina Earl who grew up twoscore miles away in Pomona. She shared his love for contest simply seemed to residue him out.

Her Westbrook-esque scouting report on UCLA'due south website reads "one of the fastest players on (the) team; excels in transition."

"I'd go upwardly to Russell and tell him what a beautiful couple they were," says Howland. "They were beautiful together and just fell in love."

Westbrook rarely spent time in his dorm room, choosing instead to soak upwards every aspect of campus life when he wasn't practicing or studying.

He would go to runway meets and softball games and, of grade, scarcely missed a women's basketball game. Bruins football games with teammates were a must.

"He would do everything," says Howland. "He was like the most popular guy on campus."

Westbrook gravitated toward people who were different from himself.

He bonded with Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. Sure, absurd Luc was an upperclassman with a car and would brand regular treks up De Neve Drive to the Saxon Suites dorms to choice Russ up for do. But the real connection was that the pocket-size forward from Republic of cameroon could put him on to a different civilization. He turned Westbrook on to African hip-hop artists—the freshman downloaded several songs—and introduced him to spicy Cameroonian dishes.

He'd ask Mbah a Moute'due south roommate, center Alfred Aboya, about his ain experiences growing upwards in Yaounde, the capital of Republic of cameroon. Westbrook encouraged Aboya'due south ambition to anytime become president of his native country.

In his freshman twelvemonth, Westbrook was assigned to be route roommates with inferior Arron Afflalo, a fellow Angeleno and the leading scorer on the Bruins' 2007 Final Iv team.

Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love as UCLA teammates. Getty Images

"He was just a chill guy," says Afflalo. "He was always so neat and liked to talk. He seemed like a regular guy. I remember us just laughing a lot. We got along and then well. I don't know why nosotros were paired, just he was a peachy roommate."

Westbrook embraced his studies and soaked upwards his American Popular Civilisation class by diving into his papers and taking advantage of the instructor's office hours.

"He was humble and friendly and unswaggery," says his professor, Dr. Mary Corey. "He had a real intellectual marvel."

He'd take selfies with groups of visiting Chinese students who were in the course or chat with octogenarian senior scholars who were continuing their pedagogy.

In an effort to get to know his players better, Daniels would oftentimes pick their brains on random topics.

"Who's your favorite player?" he asked Westbrook one day afterwards practice.

"Pau Gasol," Westbrook replied. "I but like his game."

The respond all the same amazes Daniels, given all the flashy high-flyers he could have chosen; but he gets it.

"With his cognition and appreciation of the game, it shouldn't be surprising," says Daniels, "Russell will always exist dissimilar and choose the unexpected."

"Y'all couldn't call him a hip-hop guy or put whatever kind of label on him," says Daniels. "He was interested in everything. Simply it wasn't because of UCLA; that interest was already in him."

Westwood was bliss.

But for the first two weeks on the basketball court, Westbrook was lost.

"He didn't know what was going on," Keating remembers.

"I was really difficult on him," says Howland. "I pushed him and got on him maybe likewise hard sometimes."

During a defensive drill, Westbrook was supposed to go back later a shot and exist the safety valve. Instead, he crashed the offensive boards each time. Howland grew increasingly frustrated and kicked him off the flooring. Westbrook mumbled nether his breath and flashed that trademark scowl.

Over the days, Keating began to watch Westbrook, closely paying attention to body linguistic communication, tone of voice and how he reacted to any and everything.

So it hit him.

"Listen towhat he's maxim, nonhow he'due south proverb it," Keating told Howland.

It was like unlocking the first fundamental to a complicated puzzle. Westbrook became easier to teach and started to option up the college game.

Only Howland trusted the steady duo of Arron Afflalo and Collison, who thrived in his squad-oriented organisation and could execute downwards the stretch. They only couldn't get Westbrook to ho-hum down. The team couldn't keep upwardly with him, which fabricated lineups he was in feel disjointed.

"He moved at warp speed," remembers Howland. "Information technology was the merely speed he had."

Westbrook wound up playing just nine minutes per game, with paltry averages of 3.4 points, 0.8 rebounds and 0.seven assists.

But the summer between his freshman and sophomore years would prove to exist one of the well-nigh meaning periods of his basketball development. He'd wake at 6 a.m. every morn and head to the gym to get shots upwards, followed by an intense weightlifting session.

After his summer classes, Westbrook would head over to the old Men'due south Gym on campus for pickup games against whatever pros happened to be in town. Westbrook tested his ability confronting the likes of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony. Few, if any, of the pros taking the floor with him could match his speed or athleticism.

"Nobody wanted to baby-sit Russ," says Mbah a Moute.

Coaches weren't allowed to spotter summertime workouts, but Howland would run across quondam Bruins similar Baron Davis and Earl Watson who couldn't go over Westbrook'due south drive and intensity.

"They'd simply come to me and say, 'Wow,'" remembers Howland. "He only blew up that summer."

As a full-time sophomore starter, he played with more control. Against Michigan State, he played forty minutes with simply i turnover. He could get his shot at whatever fourth dimension. He learned to play with Darren Collison. He could aggressively defend without fouling and was named Pac-x Defensive Histrion of the Twelvemonth.

Later the season, Westbrook visited Howland in his office. He wanted to put his proper name in the draft. Howland was reluctant. He thought Collison was leaving and hoped Westbrook would blossom into a well-rounded starting point guard equally a junior. He had been in the mid-20s on most draft boards, and Howland thought that, with more skill development, he could exist a top-3 pick.

Plus, he had grown attached to Westbrook as the center and soul of the program.

"You dream about coaching a kid like that, a person similar him," says Howland. "He was an unbelievable leader. He was so positive. He embraced everyone. His personality was so positive that everyone was taken ashamed. He was e'er then upbeat. He tested off the charts in all the personality tests. I actually miss him."

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Sound and Fury

The Seattle SuperSonics' practise had been over for about 20 minutes. Starting point guard Earl Watson made his way up to the head coach's office. P.J. Carlesimo was preparing to look at game tape of the Sonics' next opponent and return telephone calls he had missed during the morn's workout.

Watson knocked on the door and let himself in.

"You gotta see this child," Watson told him. "He's the all-time histrion they have."

Westbrook was on their radar, but the team was in the market for a big man. And the Sonics weren't bowled over past his stats during his fourth dimension at UCLA.

"Simply Earl was just bubbling," says Carlesimo. "He kept telling us Westbrook was the best matter most the program. He made it his mission to convince us, so we started to take a serious look at him considering he was and then passionate."

After Westbrook declared for the draft, he began working out full-time with trainer Rob McClanaghan. Westbrook would go far daily at Santa Monica High School for high-intensity, 90-minute training sessions in the sweltering gym three blocks from the ocean.

He loved raggedy gyms. Squeaky floors, crooked rims and fingerprinted backboards gave his workouts a gritty charm.

It's been the goal of nearly every coach or trainer who has worked with Westbrook to get him to do one thing: boring downwardly.

"He's such a freak athlete he didn't know how to play irksome," says McClanaghan, who was a walk-on point baby-sit at Syracuse from 1998 to 2001. "He needed to learn to play at different paces, which would actually make him harder to guard."

McClanaghan explained to him that the best players in the world—Kobe, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron—played tedious. In other words, they controlled tempo to set up their defender, then used their skills to get their desired shots.

"In this league," says McClanaghan, "slow is quick. I'd rather have to slow a guy downwardly than pick a guy up."

Early on, Westbrook urged McClanaghan to come to the gym everyday—the aforementioned way his 12-yr-erstwhile self would insist to his father that they work out on Thanksgiving. "He wanted to become 7 days a week," says McClanaghan.

To perfect his clanky pull-up, McClanaghan would have Westbrook start at one hash marker and dribble full speed to the opposite elbow, stop on a dime and pull straight up. They nicknamed the elbow the "kill spot." Some other drill would have him start at the foul line, race the length of floor and pull up at the other foul line.

Westbrook at his introductory presser. Getty Images

The Sonics landed the fourth pick and planned to bring in about 20 players for workouts. They had Stanford center Brook Lopez at No. 4 on their draft board. General director Sam Presti loved Westbrook'due south athleticism, but he wasn't sold on playing him alongside Durant. Plus, the team desperately needed a big to ballast its defense.

In the run-upward to the draft, Carlesimo cast his vote: Lopez.

"There but aren't that many x-year bigs that come up along," says Carlesimo.

Subsequently watching an early-morn workout in Santa Monica in which Russell arrived 45 minutes before the GM, Presti knew he had his man.

Howland was in that location the night Westbrook was taken with the quaternary overall pick. He still has the SuperSonics cap the plucky baby-sit from Leuzinger gave him that night.

On July 2, Carlesimo took his wife to dinner to celebrate their 10th nuptials anniversary when the phone rang merely every bit the entrees arrived. Information technology was Presti telling the charabanc the bargain had gone through, clearing the way for the team to relocate to Oklahoma City. They had to be in OKC the side by side day to expect for a new do facility and begin preparing its renovation. Carlesimo had planned to spend the summer working with Westbrook, simply he never got the hazard. He wasn't able to make up for lost time that flavour, either.

Subsequently a 25-point dwelling house loss to the Hornets, Presti walked into Carlesimo's function and told him he was being let get. The i-12 team was no longer his. The players found out when assistant coach Scott Brooks boarded the aeroplane and announced to the group that he was taking over.

It was at present upward to Brooks to go along the challenging task of molding Westbrook'south vast upside. His biggest marry was longtime banana Male monarch Kalamian, who came on board a yr later on.

"You can't build trust in a week or a calendar month or fifty-fifty a yr," says Kalamian. "Information technology doesn't work like that. You have to allow him to see that you lot can offering him something that can assistance him, whether it's skill development or valuable information during the flow of a game. When he tries things I suggest and they begin to piece of work, the trust starts to build. That'southward when he starts to believe in you."

After several years together, Westbrook became receptive to Kalamian'southward coaching to the point he'd be the one in his ear in belatedly-game situations when the Thunder would narrow their offensive package downwardly to three or four plays.

Kalamian would reach in his suit jacket and pull out an alphabetize menu with the scripted plays Westbrook could choose to run depending on situations and matchups.

"He'd get down the list and say yea or nay," says Kalamian. "That'southward the other side of trust. We actually let him call a game."

Piece of cake to dismiss, easy to ignore no more. The kid who one time couldn't get noticed by mid-level colleges is a perennial MVP candidate with four All-Star appearances, an All-Star MVP, a scoring title and a gold medal.

Kalamian sums it up: "What else is there for Russell Westbrook to practice to prove to people who dubiousness him?"

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Courtesy of Scott Hirano

Dorsum at the team's Blue and White scrimmage, the next bucket wins. In a moment of confusion, Ibaka gets lost on a screen, freeing Steve Novak. Rookie Cameron Payne flings Novak a pass, and he knocks downward a buzzer-beating iii.

"Man, f--one thousand!" screams Westbrook. "That's bulls--t!"

He shoots Ibaka a death stare.

The second unit runs onto the flooring, shouting wildly, and mobs Novak.

Westbrook storms back to the bench. He plops himself down on the last seat on the bench. Sitting about one pes away, you can experience the heat emanating from his sculpted body. Y'all can smell his deodorant.

He stares forward. He is seething. He needs to be lonely right now. For his benefit and everyone else's. His arms residual in his lap, his fists balled.

Kevin Durant walks over and momentarily palms his head with his right hand.

"Way to go, Zero," he says, before walking away.

Several players arroyo with an encouraging discussion and reach out to touch on the balled fists in his lap. Information technology's a preemptive move to avoid seeing Westbrook leave them hanging. Kids telephone call out to him by his concluding name, asking him for his vivid-orange Hashemite kingdom of jordan sneakers.

New jitney Billy Donovan sees his star player and cautiously approaches.

"I thought yous made a great pass on the second-to-last possession," says Donovan. "Cracking awareness."

Westbrook doesn't blanch. He stares straight forward. Nil. Donovan is slightly dislocated. "Good stuff," he says, patting Westbrook on the shoulder again earlier slowly stepping dorsum. Westbrook continues to stare forwards. He doesn't acknowledge anyone who approaches.

This is how he deals. Donovan pauses momentarily then awkwardly turns abroad.

"I don't care what people think almost me," says Westbrook. "And I never will."

The only thing you lot tin can't change about yourself is where you're from.

And yous cannot change the indestructible Russell Westbrook.

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