For a professional athlete, I have to imagine that one of the worst times to be asked about your plans for the future is right after watching your team’s season end. In the aftermath of a tough loss, you’re frustrated. Emotions are running high. You’re still lamenting what could’ve been. There’s likely no consideration about what’s to come because you’re still processing what just happened, and you aren’t in the best headspace to make a logical decision.
Now throw that context into the career of a 17-year veteran like the Denver Nuggets’ Russell Westbrook. The explosive, still useful, and still volatile guard is a no-doubt future Basketball Hall of Famer. However, he has yet to win an NBA championship at 36 years old, and you have to imagine that’s quite frustrating in itself.
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With the Nuggets’ Game 7 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday, Westbrook now enters an offseason where he has a player option on his Denver contract to return to the Colorado Front Range in 2025. He, of course, has to accept that option, though. And it’s definitely not something you want to think about lightly or while in a state of fraught emotion when you’ve been playing in the NBA for nearly 20 years.
So, as Westbrook was asked about that player option roughly one hour after Denver’s season-ending loss, is it fair to expect him to have an eloquent answer already prepared? Probably not.
This response to that question, while blunt, was totally fair:
Dearest readers, this is a lesson to all of us.
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We are allowed to let things breathe. No one should be making any critical life decisions when they’re irritated and their adrenaline is still running high. And no high-level athlete, like Westbrook, should be expected to have the perfect answer about their playing plans immediately after their team’s season has ended.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Russell Westbrook had curt response to question about his Nuggets future after Game 7