Russell Westbrook enjoys the Nikola Jokic school of wayward careers

In some ways, my worst nightmares about Russell Westbrook joining the Denver Nuggets have come true: He’s wormed his way into the starting lineup; he has usurped the point guard position from Jamal Murray; he shoots the ball quite often; he shoots threes; Michael Malone loves him. And yet as all of this has happened, as Westbrook’s role with the team has gotten bigger and more important, have the Nuggets gotten … better? What the hell is going on here?

Things didn’t start off so well. At the beginning of the season, Westbrook was embedded in the second unit, entrusted with keeping the offense humming while Nikola Jokic sat on the bench. The no-joke minutes have always been a disaster for the Nuggets, but Westbrook just made things worse. His early-season stints were full of the smoked layups, ill-advised jumpers and reckless plays that came to define his seasons in Los Angeles and marked him as a candidate for an infamous retirement this past offseason. But then injuries began to bite the team, which shuffled Westbrook into the starting lineup, and from there the Nuggets just kind of stopped losing. 23-15 The Nuggets are 13-4 in games Westbrook has started, and that’s no accident. As a starter, Westbrook is averaging 15 points, seven rebounds and eight assists per game. He also gets two steals per game and is shooting 53 percent from the field.

Westbrook hasn’t accomplished this by transforming himself into a more deliberate, cautious, or precise player. He’s still a crazy guy. What he quickly found out this season, however, is that good things happen when you pass the ball to Nikola Jokic. It feels crazy to write this, but the Westbrook-Jokic two-man game has so far supplanted the Murray-Jokic two-man game as the engine of Denver’s offense. With Murray flying in and out of injuries and lackluster performances, it has fallen to Westbrook to be Jokic’s sidekick.

In a few specific ways, Westbrook is an even better partner with Jokic than Murray ever was. What immediately stands out when these two are on the court together is Westbrook’s unwavering commitment to getting the ball in Jokic’s hands in advantageous positions, something he excels at because he is a member of the last generation of NBA guards, who knows how to throw an entrance. pass. Westbrook sends crisp, accurate passes to Jokic from all sorts of angles—low hops that evade shins and shoes to find Jokic’s deep hands, high-flying balls that fit into windows only Jokic can reach—and the big man has party as a result. It’s no coincidence that Jokic is scoring a career-high 31 points per game. match.

Even the Westbrook-Jokic pick and roll, which should be a dud given Westbrook’s lack of shooting ability, is strangely effective. When Jokic runs a two-man action with Murray, he tends to set the screen high up the floor, the goal being to pop Murray into space, from where he can either step back into an open three-pointer, explode to the rim, or beat Jokic in the short throw with a pocket pass. When Jokic screens for Westbrook, however, he does so much lower, sometimes as far down as the free throw line. Westbrook’s defender almost always goes under this screen and shadows Jokic, who puts one defender on his back and one almost in his lap. This is where the play is supposed to die: Westbrook has plenty of room to fire off a jumper, but it’s useless to him because he can’t really shoot. Jokic has a decent enough post-up position, but he has two defenders hovering around him to intercept an entry pass.

Westbrook and Jokic solve this problem through sheer stubbornness. Westbrook will just pass the ball to Jokic anyway, who fits an inbound pass between two defenders starting a double team. Here is where it will be good: Still equipped with most, if not all, of the burst he had when he was 25 years old, Westbrook will cut hard at the rim. Jokic will hit him with a perfect pass out of the double and Westbrook will be at the hoop before the rotating defender can do anything about it.

Through this relatively simple act, Jokic and the Nuggets have more or less solved the late-career Russell Westbrook Conundrum that plagues coaches who want him on the floor because he’s a one-of-a-kind athlete who can grab any rebound he will and run a fast break at easy speed, but definitely don’t want him throwing errant passes all over the court and throwing up wild layups that are lucky to find rims. As it turns out, it’s pretty hard to turn the ball over when you’re only passing to Nikola Jokic, and nothing leads to a cleaner look at the rim than a cut that calls for a Jokic pass. Westbrook is currently shooting 69 percent at the rim, which is the best mark of his entire damn career.

Will it all eventually blow up in the Nuggets’ faces? Possibly! As fun as it has been to watch Westbrook and Jokic turn the Nuggets offense into a weirder but equally effective version of itself, success in the postseason will be hard to come by without Murray getting his act together and resuming his role as Jokic’s go-to dance partner. . What we can say right now is that there’s no better place for a player to try to save his crumbling career than in the warm glow of Nikola Jokic. I think we all know what’s going to happen next: Ben Simmons gets traded out of Brooklyn and comes to Denver for the league minimum.