Russell Westbrook is calling time on a storied NBA career — 18 seasons, seven franchises, and some of the craziest stat lines the league has ever seen.
The 37-year-old announced his retirement on August 12th in a video posted to social media. He had been a free agent all summer after a final season in Sacramento where he started 58 games and averaged 15.2 points, 6.7 assists and 5.4 rebounds.
His last few years were spent as a role player moving from team to team, but that shouldn’t take away from what he achieved.
Westbrook retires as one of the best point guards the league has ever seen.
Russell Westbrook’s career by the numbers
Westbrook’s prime was something to behold, with the 2016-17 season remaining his best, and one of the best individual years on record.
He averaged 31.6 points, 10.7 rebounds and 10.4 assists, won MVP and posted 42 triple-doubles, still the most in a single season.
His total career numbers are just as impressive.
He ends his career with 209 regular-season triple-doubles and 221 counting the playoffs. He owns four of the seven seasons in NBA history in which a player averaged a triple-double, and his 2020-21 year in Washington is the only season anyone has averaged at least 11.5 rebounds and 11.5 assists.
Westbrook and LeBron James are the only players in the top 15 all-time in points (14th), assists (5th) and steals (14th). His 9,025 rebounds are the most by a guard in league history, and his 12,094 points in the paint are the most by any guard across 30 years of tracked shot-location data.
Add to that nine All-Star selections, nine All-NBA teams, two scoring titles, three assist titles and a place on the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team.
Legendary.
What made Westbrook special
None of that explains why people so loved to watch him. Westbrook attacked the rim at full speed for 18 years, in blowouts and in elimination games, never giving anything but 110%.
The data backs it up. Over his 11 seasons in Oklahoma City, the Thunder were 5.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor, and in 17 of his 18 seasons in the NBA, his team played at a faster pace when he was out there.
But there was a fair amount of negativity thrown his way, too.
He was “Westbrick” for the best part of a decade, blamed for shooting too much, for padding stats, for whatever went wrong on whichever roster he joined. That reputation followed him through Houston, Washington and Los Angeles.
But the response to Brodie’s retirement told the real story. Tributes arrived from teammates, rivals and fans who enjoyed every minute of watching him play.
He won’t be remembered for the down years. He’ll be remembered for the historic ones.
The record that won’t hold
Nikola Jokic sits on 198 regular-season triple-doubles — 11 behind. He recorded 34 last season alone. At anything near that rate, the Serbian goes past him inside the first two months of 2026-27.
Jokic has already caught him on the combined list, tying Westbrook on 221 regular-season and playoff triple-doubles during Denver’s April series with Minnesota.
Behind him though, the gap is enormous.
Luka Doncic is the next active player with 90 at the age of 27. He would need another decade at his current level to get there. Josh Giddey and Cade Cunningham have the all-around game to collect them in bulk, but both are so far back that the math will be hard to beat.
Even without the all-time record, Westbrook is the reason triple-doubles no longer make headlines. Oscar Robertson did it first, nobody came near it for decades, then Westbrook turned the stat line into a normal part of watching basketball.
The NBA is worse off without him.
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