I’m trying to figure out what Russell Westbrook meant when he told Donovan Mitchell “Don’t stop” repeatedly as they met a center court after the final buzzer. “Don’t stop”. Like chucking shots? Don’t stop chucking shots? That’s got to be it. Westbrook knows as well as anyone the heights to which you can ascend if you do nothing but chuck tons and tons of shots and also sometimes pass the ball to give the illusion that you don’t care about literally nothing except scoring the basketball.
It’s a good thing to hear from the reigning MVP. His coaches, his teammates, his agent, they’re all going to, at one point or another, tell him to stop chucking so many shots. But now he can respond, in full truthfulness, “That’s sounds great and all but oh yeah Russell Westbrook who won an NBA MVP award told me to keep shooting so I think I’ll go with his advice over yours”.
That’s what the fans want anyway. Do they want to see Ekpe Udoh’s mangled abortions of shot attempts? Hell no. They want swaggy threes, they want crossovers, they want inefficient midrange isos, they want contorted layups and highflying dunks. That is what they want, and that is what Mitchell gives to them every night.