Former Lakers assistant coach says Russell Westbrook is ‘very coachable’

Sep 28, 2022 - 7:55 PM

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Among the numerous problems the Lakers faced last season was Russell Westbrook and his feud with Frank Vogel. The two sides never gelled and pushed back against one another for much of the season, sometimes privately and sometimes publicly.

It all seemed to reach its boiling point with Westbrook’s postgame press conference in which he called out Vogel and how he was using Westbrook during the season. Even Austin Reaves acknowledged Westbrook and Vogel didn’t see eye to eye during the season even if he felt it didn’t impact the team.

Given that mountain of evidence, it’d be hard to consider that player coachable. However, former Lakers assistant coach Mike Penberthy had a very different take on Westbrook’s approach last season in an interview with Seerat Sohi of The Ringer (emphasis mine).

“I just feel like he accepted a role he had probably never played in before, not knowing how hard it would be,” said Mike Penberthy, a former Lakers assistant coach. “It probably just felt like he was in quicksand the whole time.” Penberthy remembers Westbrook as a player who was “very coachable.” He “listened, he wasn’t stubborn” and wanted to “have the truth told to him.”

“He’d come into practice, and he would be frustrated with how he was playing,” Penberthy said. “It’s hard, though, when you’re answering questions after a game and you haven’t played as well as you want to, to give that type of response. He feels like he’s being attacked, so he’s going to put his defenses up. And by the end of the year he just …” Penberthy pauses. “I mean, it just, when it rained it poured, you know?”

Reading between the lines of the quote a bit, it seems like Westbrook may have started the year as a coachable player but the defenses came up and that may not have been the case as the season finished.

Even then, that’s a very...generous view of Westbrook’s season last year. By most accounts, he was not someone who was showing a willingness to change. You just needed to watch Lakers games throughout the season to see Westbrook doing many of the frustrating things late in the year as he did early in the season or even from seasons prior.

This isn’t to call Penberthy a liar. Perhaps he was more coachable than it seemed publicly. It’s hard to imagine that being the case but it certainly could have been. Based on the early quotes from Darvin Ham this season, Westbrook does seem coachable. But everything feels rosy in September versus March.

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