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Throughout the early part of his career, people mostly tried to define Russell Westbrook through negatives. Though Russ has always quite obviously been one of the league's most talented players, there was an unfortunate tendency to focus on what he doesn't do, on why he falls short of being the player that people so desperately want him to be. If you've been watching the NBA for the past eight years, you've heard it all.

"He doesn't play under control."

"He doesn't have good shot selection."

"He's not as good a defender as he should be."

"He's not a true point guard."

"He doesn't make his teammates better."

"He's not the right kind of player you want next to Kevin Durant."

If any of that were ever true, it's all irrelevant now. The 2015-16 season has undoubtedly been Westbrook's best to date, and he hasn't really changed the way he plays one bit. Russ is still doing everything the same way as he always did, only he's gotten even better. He's taken the Let Westbrook be Westbrook ethos to its logical extreme, and it has been absolutely thrilling to watch.

He's still, as always, going balls to the wall, exploding up and down the floor with the kind of ferocity most players couldn't dream of reaching even at peak levels, let alone on a night-to-night basis.

"It's difficult to do for certain guys, to be able to play the same way every night," Westbrook said at his All-Star Weekend media availability on Friday. "I don't take no off nights. I just always give 110 percent."

And if there's anything that defines Westbrook as a player, it's that. Always giving 110 percent is the cliché to end all clichés, but every fiber of Westbrook's basketball being embodies it. He always looks like he's going to burn right through the TV screen, leap into your living room, dunk in your face, holster his finger-guns and let loose with a primal scream. The borderline recklessness that defines his play is almost terrifying to watch. You're scared for him, for the other team, for anyone within 10 rows of the floor.

If you had to pick a single word to describe his game, it would probably have to be danger. He puts the opposition in danger with his explosiveness on both ends; he puts his own defense in danger at times with his gambling; he puts baseline cameramen in danger when he blazes through the paint and hammers home one of his signature, angry throw-downs.

He now does things that don't seem humanly possible so often that it's become somewhat routine to hear him described as an alien, a player simply not of this world. Where he was once defined through negatives, he's now just as often defined through his indescribability.

Unsurprisingly, Westbrook still doesn't really care what anyone says about the way he plays -- which is good, because there aren't enough words in the English language to adequately convey what he does on the floor.

"I feel the same I felt back then when everybody was talking," Westbrook said, when asked if he feels vindicated that he's been able to stay the same player rather than bend to the will of people that so fervently criticized him. "I constantly keep doing the same things I've been doing, getting better each and every season. I just want to be able to compete at a high level. I just find ways to keep getting better and better and then let the rest, you know, take care of itself."

And take care of itself it has. Russ is sporting career-high averages in rebounds, assists and steals at the All-Star break, and he's having the most efficient scoring season of his career as well. He's second in the NBA in assists, he leads all guards in rebounds by a mile and he leads the league in steals. He's second in all of basketball behind only Stephen Curry in almost every advanced statistic: Win Shares (fourth in WS/48), Player Efficiency Rating, Box Score Plus-Minus, Value Over Replacement Player, NBA.com's Player Impact Estimate and ESPN's Real Plus-Minus. And his team, though not quite on pace to break league records like the Warriors, is damn good, too. The Thunder comfortably hold the third-best record in the NBA at 40-14 (that's a 61-win pace), and now, more than ever before, Russ is the engine driving everything they do.

He's never had the ball in his hands more often than this year (at least in the SportVU era), and the disparity between how much he and Durant hold the ball has never been bigger, either. Westbrook leads the NBA in usage rate, but he also ranks fifth in Nylon Calculus' Playmaking Usage (which measures the percentage of team possessions on which the player contributes a potential assist or free-throw assist), a testament to just how much responsibility he bears in terms of creating opportunities for his Thunder teammates.

Those players have also been incredibly efficient when he sets them up for those opportunities -- their effective field goal percentage of his passes is higher than that of Chris Paul's teammates, or Stephen Curry's, or Rajon Rondo's, or John Wall's, or almost anyone else's -- a testament to how well he puts them in scoring position with his dishing. He's making smarter, more high-level passes than at any point in his career, and it's paying dividends for everyone. OKC's top seven rotation players (Durant, Serge Ibaka, Steven Adams, Enes Kanter, Andre Roberson, Dion Waiters, Anthony Morrow) all shoot significantly better off passes from Westbrook than on any shots, putting the lie to the notion that he doesn't make his teammates better.

"Finding ways to make other guys better, that's most important to me," Westbrook said. "To see other guys' games expand, at the same time our team is expanding." To his credit more than almost anyone else's, the Thunder are again rolling along with one of the league's best offenses. They're second in the NBA in per-possession scoring efficiency at the break, per NBA.com, and they've been very nearly as effective in the in the 396 minutes Westbrook has been on the floor without KD as they have in the 1,456 minutes they've played together.

The Thunder defense has been up-and-down (and there were a few weeks in January and the early part of February where it was a straight-up disaster), but they still check in 10th in defensive efficiency at the break. We know they can hit a higher level than what they've shown recently -- they defended at a near-best-in-the-league level for a 10-game stretch in December. An elite defense is in there, somewhere. If they can find it by the time the postseason rolls around, they're a threat -- possibly the biggest threat -- to Golden State's crown. A team that ranks in the top 10 on both ends of the floor is a true championship contender, no matter if the two teams in front of them look like two of the best of all time or not.

The Thunder will likely have to get through both San Antonio and Golden State if they want to return to the Finals, though, and that's a tall order. It's obvious to say they'll need Westbrook at his best if they want to get by either or both. Every team needs its best players playing at their best to make it through the playoffs and hoist the Larry O'Brien. In a change from years past, though, it should also be plainly obvious that OKC needs to Let Westbrook just continue Being Westbrook if they want to have any chance of getting where they want to go. Fortunately, there won't ever be an issue getting Westbrook to stay himself.

"That's the mentality I've had to be able to get to this point," Westbrook said. "And that's the mentality I'm going to keep until I'm done playing."

Russell Westbrook addresses the media at All-Star Weekend. (USATSI)