Russell Westbrook Has Listed His LA House For $29.9M...Now Why Would He Do That?
As of today, September 13th, Russell Westbrook is still a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. That's not all that surprising since he doesn't exactly have a robust trade market at the moment, but there's still no true guarantee this will be the case by the time camp opens later this month. The Lakers have made their 2027 and 2029 picks available in hopes that could get someone to bite, but so far there haven't been any takers.
Or have there been?
When it comes to trades/free agents/player movement, one thing that always seems to pop up is the real estate rumor. You've seen what I'm talking about. When a player is rumored to be leaving or wants to be traded, we see a report that they've listed their house for sale. Sometimes there's the rumor that Player X is looking to buy real estate in a certain city. It wasn't too long ago we had some real estate rumors surrounding Kyrie Irving and where he was staying while a member of the Celtics right before he dipped
Other times it's all bullshit and is more just really rich people selling their really expensive houses. This now applies to Russell Westbrook because it would appear that he has put his LA home on the market
This could mean that Westbrook is about to head out of LA, but it also could mean he's just selling one of his many houses in the area. Seeing as how he's from LA it's not all that weird for him to have a house there even if he plays for another team so I'm not sure I'm taking the bait with this meaning Westbrook is about to be traded. His $47M salary still exists and there aren't too many teams that could
A) Take this on
B) Would even want Westbrook on their team
It feels like their only chance is maybe Ainge being willing to take Westbrook off their hands for those first round picks only to then waive him, but that doesn't feel all that realistic at the moment.
I'm sorry if this is upsetting to any Lakers fan who may have seen that tweet and got excited, but I'm also someone who thinks Westbrook gets way too much of the blame for how dogshit the Lakers were last year. Is he perfect? Of course not. But at this point it seems silly to get worked up and upset that Russell Westbrook plays like Russell Westbrook. There should have been no surprise what his game would look like once he joined that team. Maybe build a better roster with depth that can actually play. Maybe don't put all your eggs in the basket of a player in AD who can't stay healthy. Maybe find some actual shooters.
Personally, I hope he's still a Laker come October. I need to see a full year of him and Pat Bev on the same roster. I don't care that they are playing nice right now, it's the honeymoon phase. Let's see what it looks like when the Lakers lose 4 of 5 or some shit. It feels like things probably won't be as positive and that's the type of chaos I think we all want to see.