Lakers News: LA Sources Call Russell Westbrook Locker Room "Vampire"

Feels harsh.

Ex-Los Angeles Lakers reserve point guard Russell Westbrook and his prohibitively expensive $47.1 million contract have both moved on to the Utah Jazz (for now), and it appears that it could not have happened soon enough.

The internal locker room tensions that had been bubbling over for the last week or so seem to have a reached a boiling point, as a Lakers source informed Dave McMenamin of ESPN (h/t to Clutch Points) that Westbrook was, well, a drain on his teammates.

"As one source told me, 'You remove a vampire from the locker room.' That meaning a vampire sucks the blood out of the locker room and Russell Westbrook moves on."@mcten on the Lakers trading Russ 🧛‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/bDWqbxvimh

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) February 9, 2023

"Well this was the time to [make a trade]," McMenamin noted. "Russell Westbrook was not going to be part of the team after the summer when his contract expired. And also, when his contract came off the books, the Lakers would have less money to deal with in the free agency period this summer, so you had to do it if you wanted to get those pieces you could have [as] part of the team moving forward." 

"You get younger, you got shooting, you got switchable defenders," McMenamin said of the return package. "And as one source told me, 'You remove a vampire from the locker room.' That meaning a vampire sucks the blood out of the locker room and Russell Westbrook moves on."

Malika Andrews and Ramona Shelburne both registered their relative shock at that phrase. "A vampire out of the locker room?'" Andrews repeated incredulously.