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      Sabrina Ionescu's First Triple-Double Leads Liberty Over Lynx

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      The Liberty star’s big night was a rarity in the W.N.B.A., but it was par for the course for her.Sabrina Ionescu was hailed as a savior for the moribund Liberty when New York’s W.N.B.A. team drafted her No. 1 overall last year. And why not? At the time, Ionescu was the college player of the year, the record-setting star of one of the best teams in the country.That made her a strong candidate to resurrect the Liberty, who were coming off two straight losing seasons and still chasing — more than two decades after becoming a founding member of the league — their first W.N.B.A. title.But Ionescu’s transition from college stardom to professional basketball was anything but smooth. Her career at Oregon ended in disappointment when the N.C.A.A. tournament was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, and then her rookie year with the Liberty ended in her third game when she injured her ankle.Now she is making up for lost time. In her third game of the new season on Tuesday night, Ionescu put up her first career triple-double: 26 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists in a win over the Minnesota Lynx.In the N.B.A., triple-doubles have become increasingly common. There were 142 this season alone, 38 of them by Washington’s Russell Westbrook. But in the W.N.B.A., they remain a rarity. There have only been nine, in fact, in the league’s 25-year history.Ionescu’s was only the second that included 20 points. In 2004, Lisa Leslie of the Los Angeles Sparks had 29 points in a triple-double that included 15 rebounds and 10 blocks.Ionescu, 23, also became the youngest player and the first Liberty player with a W.N.B.A. triple-double, but the feeling was hardly new. She had 26 triple-doubles in college, an N.C.A.A. record.“Obviously getting a triple-double in a win is important,” she said after Tuesday’s game. “It’s definitely pretty cool.”Should Ionescu do it again — and why wouldn’t she? — she would set the record for regular season W.N.B.A. triple-doubles, with two, although Sheryl Swoopes once had one in the regular season and another in the playoffs in the same year.Ionescu’s season is just three games old, but she is already matching or exceeding the hype that marked the start of her career. Going into Wednesday night’s games, she leads the league in assists, with 9.0 per game, and ranks fifth in scoring at 21 points. As a 5-foot-11 point guard, she even ranks third in defensive rebounds.Outside of the triple-double stats, Ionescu also leads the league with 10 3-pointers, and is making them at a .526 clip. She ranks first in both free throws and attempts, hitting 19 of 21 so far.And one could argue that Tuesday’s game was only her second most memorable night of the season. Last week, she hit a game-winning 3-pointer to beat the Indiana Fever in the Liberty’s season opener.When a team is as bad as the Ionescu-less Liberty was last year — they finished a league-worst 2-20 — improvement is expected. It doesn’t always come so fast. But now the Liberty are off to a 3-0 start for the first time in 14 years, and it is not absurd to see a healthy Ionescu lead the team to the playoffs.She isn’t afraid of the rising expectations.“The expectations I have for myself are always higher than anyone else’s,” she said last fall, “regardless of what level I’m playing at.” More

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      What Rudy Tomjanovich Learned by Coaching the Greats

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      Tomjanovich led the Houston Rockets to two championships (Hakeem Olajuwon), briefly coached the Lakers (Kobe Bryant) and oversaw an Olympic team (Kevin Garnett).Even as a noted players’ coach, Rudy Tomjanovich had a hunch Kobe Bryant would need some time to embrace their new partnership.After five years and three N.B.A. championships under Phil Jackson, and having thrived in the read-and-react triangle offense Jackson championed, Bryant was suddenly playing for a lifelong Houston Rocket with different sideline sensibilities.“It was an adjustment for him because I was a play caller,” Tomjanovich said.What Tomjanovich shared with Jackson, if not an offensive philosophy, was a gift for reading superstars and ultimately connecting with them. His time with Bryant was short during the 2004-5 season, when Tomjanovich quickly deduced that the stress of coaching had become damaging to his health, but at least one Laker urged him not to walk away.“Kobe tried to talk me out of it,” Tomjanovich said in a telephone interview, reflecting on his resignation, as well as how he meshed with Bryant, after just 43 games.In the buildup to this weekend’s pandemic-delayed inductions for the Basketball Hall of Fame’s class of 2020, Tomjanovich, 72, has been telling old stories often — most of them, naturally, from his 32-year run as a player, scout and coach in Houston. The class is headlined by Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Bryant, who will be presented by Michael Jordan and inducted posthumously. Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26, 2020, that grief-stricken fans and peers, all of the honorees included, are still struggling to process.Tomjanovich coached Bryant and the Lakers for 43 games before stepping down for health reasons.Brian Bahr/Getty ImagesTomjanovich, after twice being named a finalist but not in 2019, earned his place among the 2020 inductees for his coaching achievements in Houston — particularly his championship partnership with Hakeem Olajuwon. The Rockets won back-to-back titles in 1993-94 and 1994-95, first with Olajuwon as the lone All-Star, then as a lowly No. 6 seed after a midseason trade reunited Olajuwon with Clyde Drexler, his college teammate from the University of Houston’s men’s basketball teams known as Phi Slama Jama.Those Rockets teams were routinely dismissed as champions of circumstance, branded as beneficiaries of Jordan’s 18-month hiatus from the N.B.A. to try to transform himself into a Chicago White Sox outfielder. We’ve since learned, through “The Last Dance” documentary series, that Jordan’s iconic Chicago Bulls were not a lock to handle Houston without a big man anywhere near Olajuwon’s level.“I heard it from the horse’s mouth — and that’s Michael,” Tomjanovich said.He said that Charles Barkley, in his first season as a Rocket in 1996-97, arranged a dinner at his home in Phoenix for the Rockets’ coaching staff. There were two very special invited guests: Tiger Woods and Jordan.“It was the first time I really got a chance to talk to Michael,” Tomjanovich said. “Nobody can ever know who would have won, but he said they were concerned that they couldn’t stop Hakeem. It was great to hear it from him.”Bladder cancer brought a cruel halt to Tomjanovich’s three decades in Houston after the 2002-3 season. Yet the way he managed an array of big personalities across 12 seasons as the Rockets’ coach helped Tomjanovich emerge as the Lakers’ choice to replace Jackson — after some flirtations with Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and an attempt to lure Miami’s Pat Riley back to Hollywood. Tomjanovich, then 56, signed a five-year, $30 million contract to coach the Lakers, who traded Shaquille O’Neal to Riley’s Heat four days later.Hakeem Olajuwon was the cornerstone of Houston’s back-to-back title teams in the 1990s under Tomjanovich.Noren Trotman/NBAE via Getty Images“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” Tomjanovich said. “First of all, I was excited that the cancer was gone. I thought, ‘I can’t pass this thing up,’ but then I just felt like I was hurting myself and I had to let it go. I love to coach good players, and Kobe was great. I thought I could do it, health-wise and body-wise, but I couldn’t. People said it was a lot of money to give up, but what good is money if you’re going to make yourself sick?”It was the rare Tomjanovich comeback story without a happy ending. As a player, he survived a vicious on-court punch from Kermit Washington in December 1977 and recovered to reach his fifth All-Star Game in 1978-79. As a coach, Tomjanovich steered the Rockets to playoff upsets of the teams with the league’s top four records (Utah, Phoenix, San Antonio and Orlando) in the 1995 playoffs to win title No. 2, including a second-round rally against the Suns after Houston fell into a 3-1 series deficit.“That’s how we got one of the greatest quotes ever in basketball,” Robert Horry, one of Tomjanovich’s Houston stalwarts, said on Monday. “Don’t ever underestimate the heart of a champion.”That defiant rebuttal to Rockets skeptics, from a beaming Tomjanovich after Houston completed a 4-0 N.B.A. finals sweep of O’Neal’s Orlando Magic, became his signature line.He is still working in the league, hired in December by the Minnesota Timberwolves as a front-office consultant. He referred to his induction as “the cherry on top of it all” and said that coaching gave him what he craved most other than championships in his final years as a player.A new identity.“I heard that for a while and it was getting old — ‘Oh, you’re the guy who got punched,’” Tomjanovich said. “It was really good to push that in the background.”Tomjanovich didn’t coach Duncan, but said he would never forget the dread he felt upon seeing him as a rookie in San Antonio, teaming with David Robinson. “The first time they threw him the ball, I watched how he caught it and where he positioned it under his chin and how he looked to the middle,” Tomjanovich said. “I got sick to my stomach.”He did briefly coach Garnett and, not surprisingly, clicked with another star. Tomjanovich coached the United States at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Garnett was one of his loudest leaders. Two scares against Lithuania, including a semifinal that the Americans easily could have lost, will surely stay with members of that team, since U.S.A. Basketball, to that point, had not lost with N.B.A. players.“I’m telling you, that was a big, big boulder that you’re carrying around,” Tomjanovich said. “You don’t want to be the first.”Perhaps he and Garnett will have a chance to share a relieved laugh about it at some point during Saturday’s festivities. Every moment of levity is bound to be relished on what figures to be, at various points, an unavoidably somber evening.From left, Robert Horry, Clyde Drexler and Tomjanovich won a championship with the Houston Rockets in the 1994-95 season as the No. 6 seed.Scott Halleran/Getty ImagesHorry, the role player supreme, has as much reason to watch as anyone. He won two of his seven championships alongside Duncan in San Antonio and regards Tomjanovich as “the best coach to play for.” He also played for Jackson and Gregg Popovich, but rates Tomjanovich at the top “because he had a feel for the players and a feel for the game.”“I only still talk to one of them,” Horry said, referring to Tomjanovich.Yet Horry added that he was unlikely to tune in, as much as he wanted to celebrate Rudy T’s big moment, and it was clear why. For all we anticipate with this starry class — what sort of speech we get from the spotlight-shy Duncan is one prime example — it’s still so hard to get past the unjust and unfillable hole in the whole occasion without Bryant able to take his rightful turn on the podium.Bryant joined the Lakers at 17, grew up over the course of 20 seasons in Los Angeles on the biggest of N.B.A. stages and, after such a long and prosperous career, had his life cut tragically short. As a regular analyst on Lakers broadcasts, Horry said he feels that sting every time the team’s network runs what it calls “Mamba Moment” highlight tributes to Bryant, his teammate on the Lakers’ three-peat championship teams from 1999-2000 to 2001-2.Horry’s daughter, Ashlyn, had a rare genetic condition and died at 17 in 2011. He said he thinks often about Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s wife, and “having to talk about not just losing a daughter but a husband, too.”“It’s too sad,” Horry said.The plan here is to revel as much as possible in Saturday’s joys, like the overdue recognition for a decorated coach like Tomjanovich, while bracing for the sadness we will all understand.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThe Miami Heat had a shorter off-season than any other Eastern Conference team after their run to the 2020 finals stretched into October.Steven Senne/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be condensed or lightly edited for clarity.)Q: In last week’s newsletter, you wrote that no one foresaw that three of last season’s final four teams would be in danger of landing in the playoff play-in tournament. That is demonstrably untrue. I am no N.B.A. prophet, but I was published in your newsletter before the season started saying that it was tremendously unfair to ask the four best teams from the season before to return to play after as little as 71 days off. I can only assume that many other voices expressed similar concerns. — Avary Mitchell (McKinney, Texas)Stein: I have never disagreed for one second with what you wrote in December. The truncated turnaround from last season to this season was always going to be roughest on the Lakers, Heat, Celtics and Nuggets — and, yes, unfair in a lot of ways.But I don’t remember anyone saying that they expected any of those teams to slip all the way to No. 7 in its conference.I reread your letter, and the same holds for you. There’s a difference between denouncing the disparity in teams’ off-seasons and predicting that the defending champion Lakers would finish seventh in the West.Injuries and Covid-19 disruptions have been a major factor for the Lakers, Heat and Celtics, on top of the unfairness, but all have still managed to slip further in the standings than any of the worst-case-scenario pundits were projecting when the season began.Q: You have been writing a lot about the Nets’ recent signing of the former CSKA Moscow guard Mike James. I want to ask you about the guard from my country who recently joined CSKA: Gabriel Lundberg. He does not have a Luka Doncic pedigree, but he was the driving force behind Denmark’s upset of Lithuania in November. Does he have an N.B.A. future? — Martin Ronnow Lund (Denmark)Stein: Thank you, Martin, for what (I think) will be recorded as our first question from Denmark.I’ve done some checking on Lundberg, since I admittedly don’t have much of a file on him, and it’s fair to say that N.B.A. teams are well aware of him now. At 26, he has made a storybook progression from playing in the Spanish second division as recently as the 2017-18 season to emerging as a force with a European powerhouse like CSKA. The performance (28 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists) you referred to against Lithuania certainly registered in front offices here, even though Lithuania didn’t have access to its N.B.A. players.There will be questions about his size (6-foot-4) as a shooting guard and his one-on-one skills, but I am told he plays with great confidence — to go with his great back story. Perhaps he can be the first Dane to really break through in the N.B.A.; helping a James-less CSKA reach the EuroLeague final four ensures he will be well scouted.Lars Hansen was the first Danish-born player to be drafted and had a brief stint with Seattle in the late 1970s, but he moved to Canada at a young age and represented Canada in the 1976 Olympics. David Andersen, who had a Danish father, had stints with Houston, Toronto and New Orleans in the N.B.A., but he was born in Australia and played internationally as an Australian. The Nets drafted the Copenhagen-born Christian Drejer with the 51st overall pick in 2004, but Drejer never played in the N.B.A.Q: I read your recent newsletter on the play-in games format and, as a fan, I love it. I also love the Knicks. The last several years have been rough, but I want to know: Is Tom Thibodeau going to win the Coach of the Year Award? — (Peter Thurlow, Ridgewood, N.J.)Stein: My official unofficial ballot, which I publish every season just for posterity, will headline next Tuesday’s newsletter. As a reminder: The New York Times does not participate in league award voting in any sport, but I still like going through the exercise of breaking down each race just for discussion purposes.While saving my extended commentary on coach of the year and the other categories until then, I can share that I was indeed leaning toward Thibodeau entering the final week of the regular season because of his unquestioned influence in establishing the Knicks as this season’s foremost overachieving team. To actually win it, though, he’ll have to beat out the league’s only two coaches (Utah’s Quin Snyder and Phoenix’s Monty Williams) likely to wind up in the 50-win club in this 72-game season.Numbers GameCarmelo Anthony keeps climbing the career scoring leaderboard, at a time when many thought he would be out of the league.Steph Chambers/Getty Images5Since Portland’s Carmelo Anthony made his debut in the N.B.A. in 2003-4, five players have moved into the N.B.A.’s top 10 in career scoring: No. 3 LeBron James (35,318), No. 4 Kobe Bryant (33,643), No. 6 Dirk Nowitzki (31,560), No. 8 Shaquille O’Neal (28,596) and No. 10 Anthony (27,337). The five players displaced from the top 10 in that span, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, were John Havlicek, Dominique Wilkins, Oscar Robertson, Hakeem Olajuwon and Elvin Hayes.30Russell Westbrook is the N.B.A.’s new career leader in triple-doubles in the regular season, after surpassing Oscar Robertson’s record 181 on Monday in Atlanta, but he still has some ground to make up to match Magic Johnson’s record of 30 postseason triple-doubles. Westbrook has 10 playoff triple-doubles — two more than Robertson’s eight. LeBron James, with 28, is Johnson’s closest pursuer on the postseason list.2In April 1970, after successfully blocking a trade to Baltimore, Oscar Robertson was dealt to the Milwaukee Bucks from the Cincinnati Royals for the modest return of Flynn Robinson and Charlie Paulk. Robinson and Paulk spent only one season each in Cincinnati, and the Royals, just two seasons after the trade, moved out of Ohio to become the Kings and a team with two home cities: Kansas City, Mo., and Omaha.15Dallas’s Luka Doncic and Philadelphia’s Dwight Howard lead the league with 15 technical fouls each, followed by Russell Westbrook (14). Doncic and Howard each remain one technical away from a one-game suspension, but there would be no carry-over if a 16th tech was accrued in the final game of the regular season. Slates are wiped clean for the playoffs, with seven technicals in the postseason resulting in a one-game suspension.22-9Since Damian Lillard’s debut season in 2012-13, Portland has won 22 of its 31 games against the Los Angeles Lakers, according to Elias. It’s the Lakers’ second-worst record against an opponent in that span, better only than a 7-28 mark against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Trail Blazers’ home win Friday over the Lakers gave them a huge edge in the race to secure the sixth seed in the Western Conference and to avoid the playoff play-in round next week.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      Oscar Robertson Wants Westbrook to Break His Triple-Doubles Record

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      “There’s no doubt about it,” Robertson said. “I hope he gets it.” And he hopes people will stop criticizing Russell Westbrook, the Wizards guard, for not yet winning a championship.In his first N.B.A. game, in October 1960, Oscar Robertson registered 21 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists for the Cincinnati Royals against the Los Angeles Lakers. In his second N.B.A. season, Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists per game for Cincinnati.Such numerical assemblages — reaching double figures in those three categories — are known in basketball parlance as triple-doubles. Yet Robinson established a league record, with his 181 triple-doubles across 14 seasons, without any fanfare. The term was not coined until the early 1980s, when the Lakers’ Magic Johnson began routinely posting Oscar-esque lines in box scores.“Honestly, I was totally unaware of it,” Robertson said this week.Nearly 50 years removed from Robertson’s final season with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1973-74, there is a hyperawareness of triple-doubles, thanks largely to Russell Westbrook of the Washington Wizards. In 2016-17 with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Westbrook became the first player since Robertson to average a triple-double for a full season, prompting Robertson to travel to Oklahoma to personally congratulate Westbrook.Robertson was traded to Milwaukee from Cincinnati in 1970, and won a championship with the Bucks the next season.Manny Rubio-USA TODAY SportsWestbrook has amassed 178 triple-doubles in his career and, with seven games left on Washington’s schedule entering Wednesday’s play, has a chance to surpass Robertson this season. In a phone interview with The New York Times, Robertson, 82, said he was rooting for Westbrook to do so and discussed the criticism that he, like Westbrook, faced in his Royals days until he teamed up with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Milwaukee to lead the Bucks to their only championship, in 1971.This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.So if they didn’t call them triple-doubles, what did people say about your big statistical performances?Not very much. In those days, they focused on scoring and the blocking of shots. There wasn’t much publicity associated with it. It wasn’t thought of until they went back into the archives and saw what I had done. I was even surprised myself.Over the first five seasons of your N.B.A. career, you averaged a triple-double (30.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 10.6 assists). Did you personally look at those numbers with any added reverence?I never thought about scoring. I never thought about rebounding. I never thought about assists. I only thought about winning. And we didn’t have such a great basketball team at Cincinnati, so we struggled a little bit. They were waiting on me to, I guess, save the franchise. But you need a team to do those things.What was the secret to being a good rebounder at 6-foot-5?In high school, I played inside and outside. So when I got into the college ranks, I went to the forward position. I just had the fundamentals to be able to play in or out. I always thank my coaches from high school for helping me build those attributes. I just knew how to box out. For me, it was just playing basketball.Cincinnati’s Robertson juggling for possession of the ball against Detroit’s Gene Shue and Chuck Noble in 1961. Bettmann/Getty ImagesWestbrook gets a lot of criticism because he hasn’t been part of a championship team in the N.B.A., and I imagine you faced something similar during your time in Cincinnati. What do you remember about the years before you won a championship with Milwaukee?I think this happens with great basketball players, like Westbrook and myself. I was with Cincinnati for many years, but we never made any notable trades to get better players. If you look back through the history of basketball — and I always tell people this — every team that’s won a championship has made key trades. Boston got Bill Russell. Red Auerbach was very astute at getting older starters from other teams to play off the bench for him. A lot of the teams I played for, they didn’t want to do that.When you look back, how jarring was it to be traded from Cincinnati to Milwaukee in 1970?It was fine. I just resented the fact that the Cincinnati basketball family felt that I hadn’t done anything in 10 years, and all I had done was make All-Pro 10 straight years. But they wanted to trade Oscar Robertson. I just did not want them to try to destroy my credibility and what I had done for the city of Cincinnati. When I went to Milwaukee, I assessed my situation, and I’ll never forget, I told my wife, “I’m not going to be the scorer I was in Cincinnati.” And she said, “Why?” I told her I have to get these other players involved in the game. For us to win, we’ve got to get the other players to make a contribution offensively.Is it accurate to classify you as a Russell Westbrook fan?I totally enjoy the way Westbrook plays. He’s a dynamic individual. They’ve moved him around to different teams and I don’t know why, because I think he’s one of the star guards in basketball. I guess they thought that when he went to Washington that he would not be that effective, but, man, he’s done a tremendous job.“I think he’s one of the star guards in basketball,” Robertson said of Westbrook.Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty ImagesAnd you’re rooting for him to break your record for career triple-doubles?There’s no doubt about it. I hope he gets it. I think he’s one of the elite guards in basketball, and I think it’s ridiculous that some sportswriters criticize him because he has not won a championship. Players don’t win championships by themselves. You’ve got to have good management. You need to get with the right group of players.Look at Brooklyn: Who could have done this years ago? How things have changed. It seems now that what’s happening in basketball, and I haven’t seen it happen in football yet, is players will get together and say, “Let’s go and play for this team so we can win.” Years ago, you wouldn’t have thought of doing that.Who else do you enjoy watching in today’s N.B.A.?I like to watch a lot of players, really. LeBron [James], of course. [Stephen] Curry. I like [James] Harden. There are so many great basketball players — including the kid out of Portland: [Damian] Lillard. Curry is probably one of the finest shooters ever, but so is Lillard. He can really shoot the basketball from far out. It’s almost effortless.Long-distance shooting has taken over the modern game. You’re OK with that?It’s a different type of basketball. It’s a players’ game. And it’s a fans’ game — they love this. I’ve always said this: 3-point shots are like 7-footers used to be — they can get a coach fired. If you have 3-point shooters and they don’t make those shots, “That’s it, Coach.” The name of the game is to outscore your opponents. That’s what it’s about. If you can shoot 3-point shots and you can win the basketball game, it’s great. If you start missing those shots and you don’t make the adjustment and start doing some other things, you’re going to be in trouble. More

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      Russell Westbrook Makes Triple-Doubles Look Easy. They’re Not.

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      Westbrook, the Washington Wizards guard, is on track to average a triple-double for the fourth time in five seasons, making it seem almost routine. So why doesn’t everyone do it?Russell Westbrook and Scott Brooks huddled by phone late Sunday. After the Washington Wizards’ eighth consecutive victory, and with the second half of a back-to-back looming Monday night against San Antonio, Westbrook wanted to do some extra strategizing with his coach.It was only a few months earlier that six consecutive Washington games were postponed because the Wizards had been ravaged by a coronavirus outbreak. Their U-turn has been so dramatic, with Westbrook’s play reminiscent of his Oklahoma City best, that Brooks couldn’t resist interrupting the serious tone by needling his star guard.“I told him: ‘You’ve got to start rebounding the ball — only five tonight?’” Brooks said. “Just busting his chops.”Those five rebounds Westbrook managed in Sunday’s victory over Cleveland, to go with 14 points and 11 assists in 36 minutes, were indeed an anomaly. In nine of his previous 10 games, 13 of the previous 15 and 16 of the previous 20, Westbrook reached double figures in points, assists and rebounds.In his first season as a Wizard, at age 32, Westbrook is averaging 21.8 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists per game — with a league-leading 29 triple-doubles to hike his career total to 175. Denver’s Nikola Jokic, with 15 triple-doubles, is his closest pursuer this season. With seven more triple-doubles, Westbrook will pass Oscar Robertson as the N.B.A.’s career leader.This is where it’s important to note that Westbrook, who is on a course to average more than 10 rebounds per game for the fourth time in five seasons, stands 6-foot-3.The official stance of this newsletter is that Westbrook’s forthcoming achievement should be celebrated heartily, at the very least for his relentless rebounding at that size, but it’s hard to say how much fanfare awaits him when he eclipses the Big O. This isn’t even a record that Robertson knew he set at the time, since the term “triple-double” didn’t come into vogue until the 1980s.Another tricky variable: In my 28 seasons of full-time N.B.A. reporting, Westbrook is right there with Allen Iverson when it comes to the most polarizing players I have covered. Because of Westbrook’s ball-dominant style, fickle jump shot, high turnover rate, occasionally brusque demeanor and, most of all, zero championships, it is often easier to find his critics than his admirers.Westbrook is averaging 11 assists per game this season, the most of his career.Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAs Westbrook closes in on Robertson, there is also a rising tendency to dismiss triple-doubles as empty calories because they happen so frequently in the wide-open modern game. (Example: On March 17, Westbrook was one of six players to record a triple-double that day.) Westbrook’s triple-doubles in particular tend to be discounted in a way that others aren’t, which he brought up in a video session with reporters after Monday’s overtime loss to the Spurs.“I think it’s very interesting that it’s not useful now that I’m doing it,” Westbrook said.As covered in a recent piece by my colleague Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, there were only 18 triple-doubles leaguewide as recently as the 2011-12 regular season. This season’s total has already topped 100, for the fifth season in a row, pointing to the various offensive advantages enjoyed in today’s N.B.A. The faster pace of play creates more possessions, and thus more statistical opportunities, and restrictions on defenders have been designed to promote more freedom of movement on offense. Players are likewise encouraged to shoot 3-pointers at record rates, boosting scoring numbers and leading to more long rebounds. Old schoolers resistant to the 3-point revolution, in response, are prone to scoff at some of the gaudy stuff we see in box scores these days.Yet this is where I feel compelled to repeat that part about Westbrook standing just 6-3. He is the only player in league history at that size or smaller to average at least 10 rebounds a game over a full season.“It’s a lot harder at 6-3,” said Lafayette Lever, who went by the nickname Fat and amassed 43 triple-doubles from 1982-83 through 1993-94.Lever understands Westbrook’s challenge as well as anyone. He was a 6-3, 170-pound guard who rang up a league-leading 16 triple-doubles in 1986-87, ahead of both Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and he didn’t have Westbrook’s explosion.“Russell is so much more athletic than I was at any point in time,” Lever said in a phone interview, “probably from the day he was born.”Lever, though, had an exceptional knack for rebounding, which he credited to playing on a high school team with no one taller than 6-3. He still ranks 10th in career triple-doubles. It wasn’t until Johnson joined the Lakers, five seasons after Robertson’s retirement, that triple-doubles were seriously tracked and discussed, but among my N.B.A.-obsessed high school friends in the 1980s, we associated triple-doubles with Lever as much as with Magic or Bird, since he seemed like such an unlikely source for them.Lever accrued all 43 of his triple-doubles in a six-season span with the Denver Nuggets from 1984-85 to 1989-90 as one of the driving forces on a team that, like Westbrook, wasn’t always appreciated. Detractors at the time took issue with the freewheeling style those Nuggets played under Coach Doug Moe — and the wild scores and stats their games produced.Fat Lever, who led the league with triple-doubles for one season while he was with the Denver Nuggets in the 1980s, said what Westbrook is doing now is a “big deal,” even if people don’t appreciate it.Mike Powell/NBAE, via Getty ImagesTurbocharged statistical lines are a staple now in a league where 13 teams out of 30, entering Tuesday’s play, were attempting at least 40 percent of their shots from 3-point range. Cries of stat padding became commonplace in Westbrook’s later years with the Thunder, and the hyper-awareness of triple-doubles — and a corresponding urge to chase them — is another perceived advantage for the Westbrook generation. But Lever insisted that achieving the consistency of Westbrook’s board work is far harder than it looks.“It’s still a big deal,” Lever said, “because not everyone is able to do it.”Westbrook made similar statements after the Wizards’ winning streak was snapped by the 146-143 loss to the Spurs. Asked about his latest triple-double, which included 22 points, 13 rebounds and 14 assists — albeit on 9-for-26 shooting — Westbrook said: “I honestly believe there is no player like myself. And if people want to take it for granted, sorry for them. But I’m pretty sure if everybody could do it, they would do it.”It’s difficult to argue with that logic, although many try. In 2016-17, Westbrook became the first player since the 6-5 Robertson in 1961-62 to average a triple-double for an entire season. That feat helped Westbrook, starring for the 47-win Thunder, become the N.B.A.’s first Most Valuable Player Award winner from a sub-50-win team since Moses Malone in 1981-82.With a boost from his recent surge, Westbrook is on a course to average a triple-double for the fourth time in five seasons, which in theory should position him as an M.VP. candidate. The reality is much colder: Westbrook has seemingly normalized averaging a triple-double and has been traded twice during that run, suggesting to some that triple-doubles aren’t especially valuable. Or, worse, that he is not a player to build around.Washington acquired him from Houston on Dec. 2 in a swap of disgruntled backcourt stars that sent John Wall to the Rockets. In January and February, Westbrook’s play was alarmingly inefficient and turnover-laden, with noticeably fewer rushes to the rim. Since the All-Star break, Westbrook has consistently played at a top-30 level, and Washington has a net rating of plus-4.4 points per 100 possessions with both Westbrook and Bradley Beal on the floor.Concern persists over Westbrook’s five turnovers per game, and his curious slippage at the free-throw line to a career-low 62.8 percent from 76.3 percent last season, but the constant thrust Westbrook plays with has made the Wizards hard to guard. His presence has not hindered Beal’s scoring, as some surmised when the trade went down; Beal is locked in an almighty battle with Golden State’s Stephen Curry for the league’s scoring title.In March and April, Westbrook became the first player to register at least 300 points, 150 assists and 150 rebounds in consecutive calendar months since Wilt Chamberlain in February and March of 1968, according to research from the statistician Justin Kubatko. Westbrook will never be for everybody, especially without a ring, but Brooks couldn’t have lobbied harder for the Wizards to reunite them when the trade opportunity arose. He coached him through nearly all of Westbrook’s first seven seasons in Oklahoma City,“The rebounding is the most incredible thing,” Brooks said. “He goes and gets them. He just has that knack. It doesn’t matter who’s in front of him; he always has one more step on his ladder. The will, the athleticism the competitive drive — I knew what our team needed.“Eleven rebounds a game for guy 6-3? We’ll never see a player like him ever again, not in my generation or my kids’ generation.”Corner ThreeJulius Randle has been big for the Knicks this season, and so have RJ Barrett, left, and Immanuel Quickley, right.Matt Slocum/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be condensed or lightly edited for clarity.)Q: The Knicks have overperformed this season. The front office did not make any splashes at the trade deadline. Jeff Van Gundy recently mentioned on television that the Knicks were “still incredibly limited” talent-wise. Their best player is Julius Randle, but the N.B.A. has been a perimeter-based league for some time. How will Leon Rose address this? — Wallace Leeth (Paterson, N.J.)Stein: April has been a month for Knicks fans to savor. Genuine optimism and joy are tangible at Madison Square Garden for the first time in years. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would inject a sober dose of pragmatism into the conversation, but it’s also difficult to quibble with the patient approach — so far.The Knicks are ahead of schedule and well positioned to pursue signings and trades to bolster an offensively challenged roster, with considerable salary-cap space and two first-round picks forthcoming in the off-season. Team officials know they still have plenty of work to do to upgrade the overall talent, but that wasn’t imperative at the trade deadline in March. It’s not like there was a difference-maker they missed out on.It’s true that this front office will ultimately be judged on its ability to sign or trade for at least one certifiable star to pair with Randle, which means persuading an established player to embrace the challenge of playing in New York as heartily as Randle did. Rose and his management team also have to brace for ongoing second-guessing about their first draft pick if the rookie guard Tyrese Haliburton continues to blossom in Sacramento, since they could have drafted Haliburton at No. 8 rather than Obi Toppin.The Rose regime, though, has done many good things in its first year. The Knicks appear to have hired the right coach in Tom Thibodeau, helped usher Randle to All-Star status and can point to promising development from RJ Barrett and the rookie Immanuel Quickley to offset the injuries that have derailed Mitchell Robinson’s third season.There have been whispers for weeks that the Knicks’ flirtation with the East’s No. 4 seed has helped restore their reputation to the point that star players are finally prepared to consider them a destination franchise again. If that proves true, they will have multiple pathways to address the concerns you raised, whether it’s by trying to sign a savvy former All-Star like Kyle Lowry or DeMar DeRozan on a short-term deal as a bridge to free-agent classes more star-laden than this summer’s, or by using future draft picks (perhaps packaged with Toppin) to construct a meaningful trade.Things could always go askew if the Knicks rush into the wrong deal, as they have been known to do over the years, or if the team’s owner, James L. Dolan, decides he needs to get involved after abiding by the organization’s plan to let Thibodeau and on-court results do all the talking. But I would say that the Knicks have certainly earned a grace period through the end of this surprising season. This is a time for Knicks fans, surely, to revel in what’s going right.Q: Do they really get the Oscar itself? Kobe Bryant was very involved in co-creating his film, which is why he was given an Oscar. Executive producers frequently provide financing and aren’t involved as hands-on producers. In any case, good for them. — @FromMeadows from TwitterStein: In my exuberance Sunday night, I tweeted that Kevin Durant, Mike Conley Jr. and Rich Kleiman, Durant’s business manager, joined Bryant as Oscar winners from the N.B.A. because they were listed as executive producers for “Two Distant Strangers,” which won the best live action short film category at Sunday’s Academy Awards. That’s incorrect.They were part of an Oscar-winning film, but did not get awards themselves. Kobe took home an Oscar trophy in 2018 for the animated short film “Dear Basketball,” which was based on a poem Bryant wrote in 2015 to announce his retirement at the end of the 2015-16 season.Q: I’ve never seen so many tweets and stories about a team signing a guy to a 10-day contract. We’ve seen posts about Mike James about 50 times over the past week. — @MrWright1218 from TwitterStein: There are some good reasons for that.It’s partially a function of where we are on the regular-season calendar. There just aren’t as many roster moves happening this close to the postseason, especially involving title contenders, so the ones that do happen generate extra coverage.Yet it’s also a byproduct of the circumstances. James was one of the most prominent Americans playing abroad, with a high-profile European club (CSKA Moscow), and he had a complicated contractual situation to negotiate — as well as six days’ worth of health and safety protocols to complete — before he could actually join the Nets on Friday. The fluidity of James’s status led to more frequent updates.Numbers GameThe Denver Nuggets are holding on, even with Jamal Murray out for the season, because of Nikola Jokic.Steve Dykes/Associated Press50Recording 50 wins in an 82-game season is a traditional marker for N.B.A. excellence. Winning 50 games in a 72-game season is obviously harder, but six teams still have a chance to do so with 19 days remaining in the regular season: Utah (44-17), Phoenix (43-18), the Los Angeles Clippers (43-20), the Nets (42-20), Philadelphia (40-21) and Denver (40-21). Of those six, only the Jazz (52) and the Suns (51) are currently on a pace to do so.61Nikola Jokic’s M.V.P. case will undoubtedly be bolstered by his durability in this pandemic season. Jokic has played in all 61 of Denver’s games and has led the Nuggets to a 6-1 record since Jamal Murray’s season-ending knee injury on April 12. Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, widely regarded as Jokic’s closest pursuer in the M.V.P. race, has played in 42 of the 76ers’ 61 games.9Monday’s home loss to the Suns, the No. 2 seed in the West, brought a halt to the Knicks’ nine-game winning streak. The Knicks have had only one longer unbeaten run in the 21st century, winning 13 consecutive games late in the 2012-13 season, which featured the club’s last playoff berth.37.5The Knicks’ Julius Randle leads the league at 37.5 minutes per game. Coach Tom Thibodeau has faced criticism for years about overplaying his best players; Thibodeau most likely would counter that Randle, at 26, is young enough to handle the workload.13This is Seattle’s 13th season without an N.B.A. team. The W.N.B.A.’s Seattle Storm have won three championships in that time, but the wait for a new franchise to replace the SuperSonics will soon take on a new dynamic when the Seattle Kraken join the N.H.L. next season. We’re less than three months away from the Kraken’s expansion draft on July 21.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      Should You Get Back With Your Ex? In the N.B.A., Maybe.

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      The reunion of Russell Westbrook and Coach Scott Brooks on the Washington Wizards shows the ups and downs of top stars’ working with their former coaches.Scott Brooks was having a “get to know you” dinner at a sports bar in Los Angeles with Russell Westbrook’s father, who is also named Russell. This was years ago, before Westbrook, then a promising player on the Oklahoma City Thunder, had made an All-Star team. Brooks was his coach.“I remember him telling me, ‘Russell will be M.V.P. one day,’” Brooks said. “I don’t know if my jaw dropped or whatever. I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, this thing is not going the way I want it to go.’ He has these unrealistic expectations of his son, which I can appreciate, having a son.”Brooks said he told the senior Westbrook: Let’s make him into an All-Star first.“He obviously knew the inner drive that Russell had, more than I knew,” Brooks said.Westbrook did end up making the All-Star team (nine times, in fact) and winning the Most Valuable Player Award, although under another coach, Billy Donovan. But Brooks and Westbrook developed a close relationship in their seven seasons together in Oklahoma City, when the team regularly made deep runs in the playoffs, and went to the N.B.A. finals in 2011-12.Brooks said that Westbrook was among the first people to call him after he was fired in 2015 and that they had remained in touch. More than a decade after that meeting with the elder Westbrook, Brooks finds himself reunited with the younger one, this time as head coach of the Washington Wizards.“Usually, the sequel is not as good,” Brooks said. “But I knew it would be really good for us, because I knew what we needed.”So far, the results in Washington have been uneven, to put it charitably. The Wizards are 14-25 and on course to miss the playoffs. But Westbrook is averaging 21.2 points, 9.3 rebounds and 10.1 assists per game — star numbers but also inefficient, coming on a below-average true shooting percentage of 49.5 percent. His teammate Bradley Beal is also having one of the best offensive seasons in the N.B.A. Yet the partnership hasn’t led to many wins.Even so, Brooks insisted that Westbrook has been an asset, particularly as a mentor to younger players, and that he has seen a different side of the guard in their second professional pairing. In their first run together, Westbrook was 20 to 26 years old. Now, he’s 32.“I’ve grown with him, and I love this version of him,” Brooks, 55, said. “Married with three kids. He’s gotten to see me raise my kids. Now I get to see him raise his kids. I love the first version because that was fearless: ‘Only thing on my mind is basketball. I can’t wait to practice. It’s Game 7 today, guys,’ and he would be salivating during practices.”Westbrook, Brooks said, is more well-rounded today.“There’s so many times that mask is just covering my smile when I see him say things to the group as a leader, or talk to him and he’ll say things about his wife and kids,” Brooks said.Westbrook, who declined to comment for this story, told NBC Sports in December of their previous time together: “We were young, Scotty was young, he was learning. I believe he’s become a great coach.”Brooks with Westbrook and Kevin Durant in 2014, during their Oklahoma City Thunder days.Stephen Dunn/Getty ImagesM.V.P.-level players rarely have just one coach their whole careers, as did Tim Duncan, who played only for Gregg Popovich on the San Antonio Spurs. Bob Cousy and Bill Russell came close, playing only for Red Auerbach on the Boston Celtics — when they weren’t directing themselves as player-coaches. Most M.V.P.s cycle through several head coaches: LeBron James has had seven. Shaquille O’Neal had 11. Brooks, Donovan and Mike D’Antoni have been Westbrook’s coaches over 13 seasons. Whether it happens because of aligned circumstances or mutual affection, it is also rare for a former M.V.P. in his prime to reunite with a coach, as Westbrook has done with Brooks.The closest example might be Moses Malone, who played for Tom Nissalke twice, as a rookie on the 1974-75 Utah Stars in the A.B.A., and then on the Houston Rockets from 1976 to 1979. He won the first of his three M.V.P. awards playing for Nissalke in the 1978-79 season.Kevin Garnett won the 2003-4 M.V.P. award under Flip Saunders in Minnesota, then was traded to Boston before the 2007-8 season. He would find his way back to Minnesota to play for Saunders again during the 2014-15 season as a veteran mentor for a young roster.Wes Unseld was named M.V.P. his rookie season, 1968-69, when he played for Gene Shue, who left the franchise but returned and coached Unseld’s final season. Steve Nash won two M.V.P. awards as the engine of the D’Antoni-led Phoenix Suns. They reunited on the Los Angeles Lakers at the end of Nash’s career — a disappointing stop, in part because of Nash’s injuries. Now they’re together again, although in a different sort of partnership: Nash is the head coach of the Nets, and D’Antoni is his assistant. And the Nets’ reunions don’t stop there: This season, the team acquired James Harden, who won an M.V.P. award while playing for D’Antoni on the Houston Rockets.The most famous and unusual example of an M.V.P. and coach reuniting involved Michael Jordan, whose two highest-scoring seasons came when he played under Doug Collins from 1986 to 1989. Jordan handpicked Collins to be his coach in Washington when he came out of retirement (again) to play for the Wizards after selling his ownership stake in the team. In the book “When Nothing Else Matters” by Michael Leahy, Jordan was repeatedly described as toxic and Collins as too deferential to him.“It was clear that Doug Collins was there to really make M.J. look good and have the most chance for success,” Etan Thomas, who was Jordan’s teammate in Washington, said in an interview. “He wanted for M.J. to go out on a positive note, and that was really his focus.”Sometimes, star-coach reunions can be both awkward and successful. Kobe Bryant won five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers under Phil Jackson. A tumultuous 2003-4 season, with locker-room infighting and Bryant facing a criminal rape charge, led to a split after three titles. Jackson then lambasted Bryant in his book “The Last Season,” but returned a year later, and the pair patched things up. They would go on to win championships in 2008-9 and 2009-10.Phil Jackson, left, and Kobe Bryant, right, won five championships together with the Los Angeles Lakers, the last two coming after their relationship fractured.Chris Carlson/Associated PressDerrick Rose is the only former M.V.P. to reunite with a coach twice, as he has done with Tom Thibodeau. Rose won the award in 2010-11 in Chicago, during Thibodeau’s first tenure as coach, when Rose led the Bulls to the conference finals. Injuries derailed Rose after that, but he resurrected his career in Minnesota, spending parts of two seasons under Thibodeau, and now he is a reliable veteran role player trying to help Thibodeau’s Knicks reach the playoffs.“They’re very aggressive in the way they approach their craft,” BJ Armstrong, Rose’s agent and a former player, said of Thibodeau and Rose, adding that their biggest similarity is that they “are very expressive in how they communicate with their body language.”For Brooks and Westbrook, a warm relationship has come full circle. In Oklahoma City, Brooks used to try to motivate his players at shootaround by asking them when the game started. After the players would respond with the tip-off time, Brooks would tell them that, no, the game started right then with preparation.This season, during a preseason shootaround, Brooks overheard Westbrook using that same tactic with the Wizards.“I trademarked that and he didn’t even give me credit,” Brooks said.Brooks said he doesn’t coach Westbrook the way he used to. Because Westbrook is older, the job is more about managing physical expectations and less about teaching the game.“I’m smart enough to realize that he’s no longer 25, and he’s smart enough to realize that he’s no longer, either,” Brooks said.Brooks’s biggest evolution as a coach, from his own telling, is in becoming more even-keeled.“When I first started coaching in Oklahoma, every loss was gut-wrenching and every win was the greatest one ever,” he said.Has Westbrook made the same evolution?“No,” Brooks said. “That guy is still crazy as heck.” More

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      Why is Russell Westbrook Headed to His Third Team in Three Years?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat’s the Deal With Russell Westbrook?Despite being a regular All-Star and former M.V.P., Westbrook is headed to his third team in three years. His value appears to be a matter of opinion.The pairing of James Harden, left, and Russell Westbrook in Houston lasted only one season, as the Rockets traded Westbrook this week to the Washington Wizards for John Wall and a draft pick.Credit…Troy Taormina/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBy More

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      Rockets’ Russell Westbrook Traded to Wizards for John Wall

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRockets’ Russell Westbrook Traded to Wizards for John WallWestbrook and Wall were both unhappy on their teams. Houston is also giving up a future first-round pick in the trade, which will reunite Wall with his college teammate DeMarcus Cousins.Russell Westbrook spent just one season with the Houston Rockets.Credit…Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressBy More