Boston Celtics: Russell Westbrook as sixth man on minimum deal proposed by CB

CelticsBlog’s Adam Taylor wrote one of the more fun pieces of the NBA offseason recently when he imagined what it would be like for the Boston Celtics to sign Russell Westbrook on a veteran’s minimum contract.

It is, of course, a far-fetched scenario that will require the Los Angeles Lakers–or whatever team acquires him in a potential salary dump–to choose to eat over $44 million in usable cap space for the 2022-23 season. Still, crazy things happen almost all the time in the NBA.

Westbrook ending up as the sixth man on a contender hardly feels like the most ludicrous scenario at this point, and quite frankly, the Boston Celtics are far from the craziest potential landing spot for the 2016-17 league MVP.

There are plenty of reasons why a league with superstars sporting larger-than-life attitudes would see an epic union like Westbrook and Boston unfold within the next year of the point guard’s expiring contract.

The Boston Celtics are the perfect spite destination for Russell Westbrook

It’s as if the league has erased Russell Westbrook’s brilliance leading the OKC Thunder in the post-Kevin Durant era and chose to misremember how dominant the 2019-20 Houston Rockets looked until they ran into a less-than-ideal matchup with the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in the postseason when people throw dirt on the 9x All-Star’s name.

While Westbrook was undoubtedly a poor fit alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis in Hollywood, he can absolutely still be a vital piece to someone’s rotation in the right setting. Perhaps some motivation could be what gets him right.

What better motivating factor could there be sharing a division with Durant and James Harden and essentially being a blood-rival to KD’s Brooklyn Nets? How about the historical rival to the Lakers — aka the team rearing to get rid of him right now?

Marcus Smart, Malcolm Brogdon, Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard will more than likely make Westbrook a superfluous piece. Still, there are worlds where these two parties could come together and, in the right role, bury the rest of the Eastern Conference.

CB’s Adam Taylor may be onto something, even if his piece was more hypothetical than anything.