Russell Westbrook Announces NBA Retirement, Bringing an End to Electrifying but Divisive Career

Russell Westbrook’s best years came with the Thunder. | USA TODAY Sports

On Wednesday, longtime NBA star Russell Westbrook announced his retirement on social media. The 37-year-old point guard finished the 2025–26 season with the Kings in Sacramento but went unsigned in the first waves of free agency earlier this summer. Now, he’s calling it quits.

And in typical Russ fashion, he did what he could to make it spectacular. To announce the news, Westbrook released a video that walked through every step of his career... narrated by Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan.

“Sometimes you don’t even know when you’ve already watched the end,” his post read. “You had to be there. And now it’s over.”

Sometimes you don’t even know when you’ve already watched the end.

You had to be there. And now it’s over. pic.twitter.com/6YoOW8WyIV

— Russell Westbrook (@russwest44) August 12, 2026

Westbrook always did enjoy doing things in style.

And so ends one of the NBA’s most electrifying but ultimately divisive careers in the modern era. Westbrook walks away after 18 seasons a nine-time All-Star with nine All-NBA nods, two scoring titles and an MVP award that came after he became the second player in league history to average a triple-double throughout an entire season. He failed to reach the pinnacle of NBA success in the form of a championship but suited up for 135 playoff games and played for seven teams in total.

As impressive those accolades are, Westbrook’s impact off the court has been even more significant. Since he was drafted in 2008, the star guard made it a priority to engage in the community of whatever city he played in. He founded his own nonprofit called the Why Not? Foundation in pursuit of those goals, and the ripple effects of his charitable work will be felt for years to come.

On the court, Westbrook leaves behind something of a complicated legacy as a player. Few were more exciting to watch at his peak—just as few were as frustrating to watch toward the end of his career.

Westbrook’s days with the Thunder were incredible to watch

Russell Westbrook was a force to be reckoned with during his peak on the Thunder. | USA TODAY Sports

Westbrook’s best days came with the Thunder in Oklahoma City, and it was a genuine treat to watch him play.

The No. 4 pick in the 2008 draft is perhaps the greatest sheer athlete to play the point guard position. Westbrook is one of the most explosive dunkers in NBA history, hard stop, much less for his size or position. The amount of jumping power packed into his tree trunk frame was impossible to believe until you saw it for yourself, when he’d fly into the open court like a homing missle before detonating on some poor defender at the rim. Every second Westbrook was on the court had the potential for an all-time highlight.

Beyond that, the energy he brought into the arena was infectious and invigorating in equal measure. Westbrook snarled and screamed his way through all his minutes on the court. Every play, even the run-of-the-mill ones, were punctuated by a furious exclamation from the intense star. Some players shy away from the bright lights of the NBA, but Westbrook drank it all in and used it as fuel for his takeoffs. “Ferocious” is a word to describe both lions and prime Russell Westbrook.

All that was true when he entered the league. Once he learned how to harness all of that chaotic energy, he became a true superstar. Westbrook was blessed with great vision and rebounding instincts, which made for an exceptionally rare and game-breaking skillset when he was at his best. He was capable of dissecting the defense in one possession before blowing the roof off the entire arena the next. It was hard to find a player more unpredictable than Westbrook during his heyday in the early to mid-2010s, in both the good and the bad ways.

Paired with Kevin Durant and James Harden, Westbrook made the NBA Finals in 2012 with the Thunder and helped ensure OKC was a fixture in the West playoffs for the next six seasons. Harden left, and then Durant did, but Westbrook persevered. It was the departure of the latter that unleashed the best statistical version of Westbrook—in the Thunder’s first season after Durant went to the Warriors, Westbrook led the NBA in scoring with 31.6 points per game while averaging 10.7 rebounds and 10.4 assists per night. He was the first player to average a triple-double over a full season since Oscar Robertson and was rightfully rewarded MVP as a result.

Every NBA player believes they have the capability to grab the game by both hands and bend things to their will. That irrational confidence is required to reach the heights of professional basketball. But Westbrook really could do that. His relentlessness combined with powerful athleticism and feel for the court meant there was no obstacle he couldn’t overcome.

But basketball is a team sport, and the Thunder didn’t win a playoff series in the franchise’s three seasons featuring Westbrook as the sole star. So they traded him in 2019, beginning the second chapter of Westbrook’s career that played out much differently than his OKC days.

The last stretch of Westbrook’s career wasn’t quite as pretty

Russell Westbrook struggled toward the end of his NBA career that saw him bounce from team to team before playing his final season with the Kings. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Much like a shooting star, Westbrook burned bright—and faded all too quickly.

Injuries slowly sapped him of the outrageous athleticism that compensated for most of his mistakes on the floor. He also struggled with the idea of sharing the ball after accomplishing so much as an individual in Oklahoma City. That’s a struggle many players go through, and not all of them are able to adjust.

Westbrook did adjust just enough to survive, but never again thrived. He played for three teams in three years from 2019–2022, first suiting up for the Rockets before getting traded to the Wizards and then the Lakers. At each stop his capabilities waned and his numbers worsened, but Westbrook still carried himself like an MVP-caliber superstar when it came to his on-court decisions. It proved a point of friction particularly in Los Angeles, where his once-sterling reputation as an elite point guard clashed with the reality that his production was that of a bench player. It was a messy situation that came to a conclusion when L.A. shipped him to the Jazz at the deadline for rotation pieces; Westbrook then went and signed with the Clippers.

Thus began the final stage of Westbrook’s career as a merely average point guard. He stuck with the Clippers for another season, bounced to the Nuggets to play with Nikola Jokić and spent his final year with the Kings. At all those stops it was clear he could still play basketball at an acceptable level—but not quite good enough for any teams seriously competing to rely on him.

And now, the end.

Westbrook isn’t alone in how his storied career faltered down the stretch. In many ways it’s archetypical. All-time great athletes have a hard time battling with their own declines. Westbrook’s battle was simply more fierce and more public than most. It does not tarnish what he did in OKC, but it does complicate things when discussing his legacy as a tremendous career comes to a close.

Westbrook was a man of multitudes over the course of his career. On a play-to-play basis he could be great and lose the game with one decision too ambitious for even his skills. He seized the opportunity to soar when it came to him—but refused to let go when he got too close to the sun.

So long to one of the most exciting point guards to ever take the court, and one of the most interesting NBA careers of the modern era.

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