“Greatest Individual Performance”: NBA Legend Puts Russell Westbrook Ahead of Kobe Bryant, Bam Adebayo & Others

Russell Westbrook closed out an 18-year career with a touching video honoring his record-setting run. One of his peers used his own podcast to single out the greatest moment of that entire career and ranked it above some of the most iconic scoring outbursts in NBA history to make the case.

NBA legend Tracy McGrady named Westbrook’s 20-20-20 game as the best individual performance he’s ever witnessed, putting it ahead of a list of legendary scoring nights.

“I know Kobe had 81, Bam had 83. I seen Luka hit 70. I seen Donovan Mitchell hit 70. I seen Book hit 70,” McGrady said on the Vince & Tmac podcast (h/t) NBA Courtside. “But the 20,20,20 to me is probably the greatest individual performance I’ve seen out of a player.”

On April 2, 2019, Westbrook posted 20 points, 20 rebounds and 21 assists against the Lakers. He became just the second player in NBA history to hit that threshold across all three major categories in a single game, joining Wilt Chamberlain, who did it in 1968.

The gap between those two instances spans more than five decades, which speaks to how far outside the bounds of normal performance this game sits.

McGrady's point isn't that Westbrook outscored those players - it's that Westbrook did something none of them could. Putting up 20 points, 20 rebounds and 20 assists in a single game doesn't just require brilliance - it requires a complete mastery of every dimension of basketball simultaneously.

Westbrook dedicated the game to rapper Nipsey Hussle, a close friend who had been shot and killed in Los Angeles just two days earlier. Westbrook, who grew up in the city and shared deep ties to Hussle’s community work, wore a shirt referencing the rapper’s “Crenshaw” mixtape and yelled “That’s for Nipsey!” while walking off the court after the win.

Turning a historically rare performance into something deeply personal, and in doing so, giving it a gravity that no scoring record alone could carry.

Russell Westbrook finished his career shooting 30.4% from three. He’s among the least efficient volume 3-point shooters of his generation, and his 5,038 turnovers rank second all-time in NBA history, trailing only LeBron James, who has played five more seasons.

McGrady's ranking also carries weight because of who is making it. Westbrook finished his 18-year career as one of only two players in NBA history, alongside LeBron James, to record both 25,000 career points and 10,000 assists.

He won Olympic gold with Team USA in 2012 and was selected fourth overall in the 2008 NBA Draft. His career resume gave McGrady enough context to compare performances across eras and he still landed on that April night in 2019.

McGrady’s ranking arrives amid the criticism following Westbrook’s retirement, which has split opinion between those celebrating his statistical career. Most notably, Skip Bayless, who doubled down on his earlier criticism of the former MVP.