The nascent rivalry between the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook has grown more and more over the last few seasons. The rivalry peaked when Kevin Durant left OKC to join the Warriors for their title run a year ago.
Westbrook, who ended Stephen Curry's run of back-to-back MVPs by winning the award last season, is a ferocious player who plays with an intensity that can be scary at times.
Yet the Warriors don't seem overly worried about it. ESPN's Zach Lowe was talking about the Westbrook-Warriors rivalry on his podcast when he mentioned this tidbit about how Golden State views Westbrook's style of play. To the Warriors, Westbrook isn't a very difficult player to guard.
"Jack McCallum's new book about the Warriors has a bunch of kind of anonymous Warriors talking about Russ and how they don't fear Russ. How KD left partly cause of Russ. How Russ's style of play is so easy for them to defend it's like cake to them."
...
"I've talked to the Warriors about his kind of stuff. What's in Jack's book is 100 percent what they say when you ask them about Russ."
It's not surprising that the Warriors find Westbrook easy to guard. Not because of Westbrook but because this is a team that's won the championship two of the last three years and has been historically amazing. The Warriors have always played great defense, and they're very proud of that.
Add in that Westbrook's main style of play is to drive toward the rim at full speed and it makes sense why the Warriors would consider that easy to defend. Although, personally, it's still terrifying to witness Westbrook drive as fast as he does and dunk as hard as he does.
