After appearing in 42 games alongside one another, the experiment pairing longtime rivals Patrick Beverley and Russell Westbrook has concluded.
Beverley was traded to the Magic for Mo Bamba (and then subsequently bought out) while Westbrook was moved to Utah and he could soon hit the buyout market, too.
It was an undoubtedly strange decision to pair Beverley and Westbrook, and the results were perfectly adequate. Los Angeles was outscored by a total of just 14 points during the 460 minutes in which they shared the court.
Now that it is all said and done, Beverley went on his podcast and he shared some fascinating insight about the experience playing alongside Westbrook — as well as LeBron James and Anthony Davis. (WARNING: NSFW language ahead.)
Around the 5-minute, 40-second mark, he was asked why they didn’t win games more often. Here is what he had to say:
“I don’t know. It wasn’t basketball. It wasn’t basketball. It wasn’t basketball. It was other [expletive]. But other [expletive] that you really can’t like pin or point out. You know, comes and goes. You know, a little bit here, a little bit there … Just the vibes were sometimes on, sometimes off. Inconsistent vibes leads to inconsistent play.”
Beverley added that most of the time when a team struggles in the NBA, it actually has very little to do with basketball.
He argued that it has more to do with how much everybody “can give” to the bank.
Despite recent reports indicating that Westbrook was a problem in the locker room for the Lakers, even though Beverley had a messy shared past with the guard, he confirmed that the 2017 NBA MVP was not to blame for the issues.
“To see how Russ is every gameday, the first person in the locker room every single game … [We] get to the locker room and Russ is there, dressed, like fully worked out already, headphones on, fully locked in.”
Beverley was also asked to characterize his relationship with Westbrook now compared to how it was when he first arrived with the Lakers.
Although the two shared tensions earlier in their careers, Beverley maintained that the beef is fully squashed.
“That’s my dog. Lifetime dog. Lifetime. Like, some real [expletitive]. Like, in a city I don’t know, we don’t like the vibe of a team: ‘Russ [expletive] it, I’m out, bro’ and [he says] ‘I’m not letting you out alone.’ You know, like, a lot of dinners of us together. We called it ‘real brother vibe’ [and] it was some real [expletive] though.”
Good for them for settling their differences, though now we can only hope that Beverley eventually offers more details about what led to “inconsistent vibes” in Los Angeles.
