[Wall Street Journal] Russell Westbrook’s Annoying Shadow

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/russell-westbrooks-annoying-shadow-1492459824

Russell Westbrook’s Annoying Shadow
Houston Rockets guard Patrick Beverley is great at pestering the Thunder’s star player.


Oklahoma City Thunder player Russell Westbrook goes up against Houston Rockets player Patrick Beverley in the first half of Game 1. Photo: larry w. smith/European Pressphoto Agency

By Ben Cohen
Updated April 17, 2017 4:44 p.m. ET

HOUSTON—The first-round NBA playoff series between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder—and James Harden and Russell Westbrook—was supposed to be a showdown of the game’s most sublime guards. It was seized instead on Sunday by the game’s most irritating guard.

It would be a nightmare for almost everybody in the NBA to be stuck guarding Westbrook for an entire postseason series. It’s a dream for Patrick Beverley. This is a matchup of a player who hates to be annoyed and a player who loves to be annoying—and the proud basketball pest won Game 1.

Beverley scored 21 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in Houston’s rout of Oklahoma City on Sunday, but his real value was harassing Westbrook into one of his worst performances of the season. He did it by making it his duty to shadow Westbrook as soon as they stepped on the court.

Westbrook started walking; Beverley started walking. Westbrook stopped; Beverley stopped. Westbrook crouched; Beverley crouched. At one point Beverley was trailing Westbrook so intently that he didn’t notice he was about to run into Oklahoma City center Steven Adams’s elbow. He also didn’t seem to notice afterward. Beverley peeled himself off the court as if it never happened.

There used to be clichés for players as irksome as Beverley. They gave 110%. They sacrificed their bodies. They had noses for the ball.

Now there is data. This was the first season the NBA unveiled incredibly granular “hustle stats” like deflections, contested shots, charges drawn and the one metric that Beverley dominates: loose balls recovered. Beverley’s rate of loose balls recovered was the highest in the league. He averaged 1.8 loose balls per 36 minutes, and there were games when the league credited him with as many as five. Beverley really is as persistent as the rest of the league suspected.

“That’s why I love him on my team,” Rockets forward Ryan Anderson said.

A player’s rate of loose-balls recovered turns out to be a good proxy for how disruptive he is. Among the NBA’s leaders in this obscure stat are savvy veteran defenders like Chris Paul and Tony Allen and eager young guards like T.J. McConnell and Yogi Ferrell. Beverley has the defensive reputation of Paul and Allen, but his identity is more like McConnell and Ferrell’s.

Beverley’s only way into the NBA was being a bother. He was drafted in the second round and bounced around Europe for years before finally sticking with the Rockets as a defensive nuisance. He’s even known as “Mr. 94 Feet,” as in the length of the basketball court. Beverley knows how to use every inch to bug the other team.

He took one break from pestering Westbrook on Sunday to stare down a rather enormous man sitting courtside for several tenuous seconds. This fan had four inches and 110 pounds on the professional basketball player in his face. He also had a reason to appreciate Beverley more than maybe anybody in the arena. Houston Texans star J.J. Watt can see defensive ferocity when it’s glaring right at him—so he obliged Beverley with the high-five he was seeking. “The guy was just absolutely killing it,” Watt said.

Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com​