Media: Russell Westbrook Doesn't Owe You Shit

Sometimes, you are a dick. Not unconsciously or accidentally, but tactically. You decide to drive someone away. They try to chat with you, and you respond hostilely. They ask you if something is wrong, and you tell them they are what is wrong. You don't like them; their presence is caging you. You need to escape, and being a dick will usually get the job done.

Russell Westbrook has been engaging in this sort of low-grade interpersonal terrorism with the Oklahoma City media for years. He's curt and sometimes openly disdainful. He doesn't want to talk to the folks shoving recorders in his face, and he doesn't want to incur persistent fines for ignoring them altogether, so he splits the difference and is a dick to them, presumably in an attempt to get them to leave him alone. It's an elegant, ugly solution.

Or it would be, if his interlocutors would take the hint. Journalism is about making numerous creative choices--Will this question get an interesting answer? Can I trim some fat from the third paragraph?--but curiously, long after becoming aware of Westbrook's penchant for standoffish, barely polysyllabic responses, many beat reporters haven't figured out that their precious pre-deadline time might be better spent talking to Kevin Durant, who is more forthcoming, or tightening up the prose on their game stories. They instead choose to solicit Westbrook's contempt. This is a purposeful decision, same as Westbrook's.

Media conventional wisdom says fans want to hear from players and coaches despite the fact most players and coaches dispense enlightening quotes about as often as they burst into song. They are evasive or prickly or just not all that good at communicating. There is nothing one can do about this--sometimes, there is an unspannable gap between what we want to know and what we are permitted to know--and yet, like foolhardy stunt devils, your faithful beat reporters keep trying to jump an eight-speed over the Atlantic. It's strange how aggrieved they are over getting wet.

This isn't a sports-specific problem. The White House press corps, for instance, have regular existential crises. Last year, Politico published a report that revealed 61 percent of the people who attend White House press briefings think the briefings are screwed up and largely pointless. Every year or so, there's an op-ed running somewhere about how White House correspondent positions should be eliminated. You'll be shocked to hear not many media outlets have stopped sending reporters into the den of spin and question-dodging. This is perhaps poor news judgment, but it is at least ostensibly in pursuit of getting answers about, say, health care policy or torture.

Here is the central arrogance of our worst journalists: they confuse wanting information with being entitled to it, and then, rather than trying to come up with inventive ways to get that information, or making due with the information they do have access to, they choose to get loudly indignant in ways that betray why someone might not want to talk to them in the first place. They throw themselves against what they know is a stone wall and take issue with its stone wall-like qualities out of a desire for attention. Plus, it's an easy column to write.

That dude Westbrook said he doesn't like? He did some table-rapping about how Westbrook isn't being a jerk to him so much as to anyone leafing through the Oklahoman's sports section. This line of reasoning suggests fans have a right to know what an athlete was thinking when the team went down by double-digits or what inspired that 15-3 run in the third quarter, which is absurd. If you purchase Thunder season tickets, you buy a seat in an arena, not a window into your favorite player's mind. The latter is a thing only he can decide to give you. It's not unreasonable for him to refuse.

This is not to god up these ballplayers, but to treat them as ballplayers. Sure, it is nice when an athlete is funny or candid or strange in an interview, but he is not required to be. Charm and eloquence are ancillary skills for someone who runs and jumps for a living, and anyway, the games and our interest in them are rich enough to employ hundreds of writers who find something to talk about even when players aren't talking to them. Russell Westbrook doesn't owe your story anything. He gives you loads of material before he so much as opens his mouth to sneer at your question.