The Side Part: Never boring

Russell Westbrook’s stat lines make eyes slot machine. He is that which is not and never will be boring! This is a floor game that’s dressed in a pair of coveralls, doing jumping jacks on the surface of the sun. The opening of all souls! Westbrook’s a bunch of well dressed Whos hand in hand in the snow singing carols. Everybody in the arena goes home with a new whale heart beating inside their chest.

What do you do when you’re handing out forty pieces, binge eating shards of glass, filleting the front pockets of your distressed YSLs so the dimes you carry can better make their way to the people? You win MVP.

Much respect and sweet sweet love to Misters Harden and Leonard. LeBron, you are still, for every intent and every purpose, that dude, but this is Westbrook’s year. Call him Most Hateful Rhino, Furious Doves, An Impossibility. My guy wore a kilt over jeans. Paired it with a yellow hoodie. There was text along the breast. It said: Why aren’t you bowing?

Had this conversation with a guy in Los Angeles. We were in the concessions line at the ArcLight in Hollywood. He wore a neon lime ski bib and had a face that looked like a thin roll of toilet paper, his white hair raining off him when he’d scratch his head.

He asked, “You like popcorn?”

I said, “If it’s good popcorn, yeah. But I also like it if it’s bad.”

He asked, “Is that a Russell Westbrook t-shirt?”

I said, “You can see that it is.”

He asked, “What is it about it him?”

I said, “I’m interested in people that move like leopards. A point guard should behave like he’s never met anyone better than him. He has great cheek bones. He’s more fun than anyone before him, a better time than Kidd or Nash ever were. Nash seems like he’d be exhausting to talk about the state of television with. He probably loves saying he loves great storytelling.”

He said, “That was a long explanation and I’m late for Logan.”

Nights the Thunder are off I try to recreate the experience of watching Westbrook, work for the fix. I take showers fully clothed. My living room has 547 fans in it. I turn them on and stand before them still wet. Spray champagne into the made wind, brush my teeth with Yamazaki, dunk my head into a bucket of Elk Valley, light my hair on fire with a bouquet of sparklers.

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