Larry Bird heaps praise on Westbrook, hopes he wins 10 MVPs

Russell Westbrook is playing on an unreal level. The Oklahoma City Thunder point guard has been averaging close to 30 points, 10 assists and 10 rebounds per game for more than a month.

In another era, those were the type of numbers Larry Bird put up nightly for the Boston Celtics. The small forward turned Indiana Pacers president told ESPN's Mike Mazzeo recently that he sees some of himself in Westbrook's game.

Bird was affected by back injuries for much of his career and says Westbrook, with two knee surgeries already at age 26, also knows only one way to play: full throttle.

Here's a young man that has had serious injuries, bad knee injuries throughout his career, yet every time he walks on the court, you know you're going to get 100 percent from him. He attacks, he's fearless and he plays the way it should be played. I hope he wins 10 MVPs in a row.

There's a bit of a football player's mentality in terms of throwing one's body on the line to win, something Bird was famous for. He added:

I just think that my opinion about basketball, the way I was taught, was when you step on the court, you play to win. Now, if you're not supposed to play to win, then they shouldn't keep score. If they didn't keep score in these games, I wouldn't have played as hard as I did. But I do think this is our job. We know that we're going to be hurting years down the road. He knows that he's going to be hurting years down the road, but he can't help it. He has to play that way to be effective, and he knows that.

- With h/t to ProBasketballTalk