Russell Westbrook leaves basketball after eighteen NBA seasons

Russell Westbrook has announced his retirement from basketball after eighteen seasons in the NBA. The 37-year-old American point guard made the decision public in a three-and-a-half-minute video posted on social media and narrated by the actor Michael B. Jordan. In it he says that the moment of the end only becomes obvious once it has already arrived.

Westbrook's career is bound above all to the triple-double, the statistic achieved by reaching double figures in three different categories in the same game. He recorded 209 in his career, the outright record for the league. In 2017 he set the mark of 42 triple-doubles in a single season, surpassing the one Oscar Robertson had held since 1962. That same year he was voted most valuable player of the regular season.

Eleven years in Oklahoma City

Westbrook spent eleven seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team with which he led the league in scoring in 2015 and 2017. In 2012, in a squad that included Kevin Durant, James Harden and Swiss player Thabo Sefolosha, he won the Western Conference before losing the Finals to Miami. In the same year he took Olympic gold with the United States national team. In all he was selected nine times for the All-Star Game.

After leaving Oklahoma in 2019 he changed teams frequently: Houston, where he played alongside another Swiss player, Clint Capela, then Washington, the Lakers, the Clippers, Denver and finally Sacramento in his last season.

His way of playing, built on a very high tempo and constant involvement in every phase of the game, long divided observers. The same qualities that produced the triple-doubles also generated many errors, and the debate over how much those statistics contributed to team results followed him through much of his career.