Westbrook's season ends in martyrdom, as it was meant to
Game 5 was Russell Westbrook's exhilarating and exhausting season in a nutshell.
He was singularly spectacular, but it wasn't enough against a clearly superior Houston Rockets side. He had 47 points and came one assist shy of a triple-double around a host of uninspiring performances from his Oklahoma City Thunder teammates.
It's the same script that played out all year, and it's how Westbrook will be remembered for his spectacular 2016-17 season: not that he was the ultimate winner, but as the ultimate martyr.
The case against him is easy to make. Never in the history of basketball has any team won it all with one player dominating the ball, and Westbrook dominated the ball to historic proportions.
Pool together his field-goal attempts, free-throw attempts, assists and, turnovers, and he grades out higher than any season from Michael Jordan, higher than that one year Kobe Bryant averaged 35 points, higher than Allen Iverson's unforgettable Finals run in 2001 - higher than any player in NBA history.
Westbrook said he only had one friend on the court, the basketball, as if that wasn't obvious to anyone who ever watched him play. He took twice as many shots as any other OKC player in the regular season (1,941 vs. 932). It was nearly triple for the playoffs (118 vs. 44).
Those numbers only look worse once you factor in efficiency. Westbrook shot 37.3 percent from the field and 25.8 percent from deep in the playoffs along with six turnovers per game. He did this while using 46.6 percent of OKC's possessions. His teammates failed, but so did he.
That formula was never going to work, especially not in the postseason. Houston didn't beat OKC because James Harden played out of his mind, they won because the Rockets were a team and the Thunder were a one-man act, and that one man couldn't deliver.
Let's be real for a second: OKC needed saving, and while Westbrook was the imperfect antihero, he never shied away from the challenge.
OKC would have gone nowhere without him. That supporting cast is a lottery team, not a 47-win club that makes the playoffs in the West. The Thunder lost one of its two pillars in the offseason, so Westbrook put the whole franchise on his back.
He saved OKC from utter ruin by becoming whatever the team needed him to be. They lost a five-time scoring champion, so he led the league in averaging 31.6 points per game. OKC needed a brave face to cover the humiliation of losing Kevin Durant, so the entire fan base donned the mask of Westbrook's snarling, petty veneer.
A championship was out of the question, so he gave his team the next best thing: the most spectacular one-man show of the season. His persona made every moment relevant, such that it was impossible to ignore him. He gave you game-winners, killer crossovers, obscene dunks, and impossible passes, all as part of a historic season. Even his postgame interviews and pregame outfits demanded your attention.
Westbrook's most impressive feat was his much-maligned chase for the first triple-double season in five decades. Not only did he break Oscar Robertson's record with 42 triple-doubles, but he somehow robbed all meaning from an objectively extraordinary accomplishment.
It got to the point where detractors even used the feat against him, citing every bit of circumstantial evidence against the bigger picture that the Thunder needed every ounce of what he could deliver, and Westbrook outperformed everyone's wildest imaginations.
Sports can be cruel in its simplicity. There is always one winner at the end of the day, and Westbrook didn't win. He wasn't even close.
He'll likely become the first MVP since Dirk Nowitzki to get bounced in the first round upon receiving the award. And in all fairness to Nowitzki, his team won 20 more games than OKC, earned the first seed, and Golden State's unthinkable upset over Dallas continues to be celebrated a decade later.
Nobody even batted an eye when Westbrook lost because it was inevitable. Fellow MVP candidates LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, and Harden would be impugned if their teams lost the way his team did, except it was never about wins for Westbrook.
The crux of his appeal rested upon martyrdom. It was "Russ versus the world" every step of the way. Our jobs as observers wasn't to critique, it was only to "Let Russ Be Russ" as he played by his own rules. Cheer on Westbrook in his defiance against Durant's departure; in his defiance against basketball convention; in his defiance against all the odds while he was weighed down by a substandard supporting cast.
He didn't win but he wasn't supposed to, so how could he be blamed? That's how his supporters will process his season. Westbrook made the most out of very little in the wake of Durant's departure, and he should be celebrated for a spectacular attempt, not judged by how it failed.