There are many great athletes in this year's draft, but Russell Westbrook is in an entirely different category in terms of his strength, agility, and body control.

While he is still raw offensively, his play on the defensive end of the floor is simply suffocating.  Westbrook can shadow just about any wing 6-7 or under and should be a top-three perimeter defender in the entire NBA almost immediately.  He is superbly quick with his lateral movement and is intimidating in the air on-ball and off-ball as a shotblocker.  His extremely fast hands will create many deflections and takeaways while turning routine passes and shot attempts into ones of high degrees of difficulty.

He also does the subtle aspects on defense well, such as attempting to prevent the ball from being swung and applying help pressure on the post.  He is extremely fast at catching back up to his man on the trail after he has been screened off-ball.

Offensively, Westbrook will make a brilliant dribble move for a 3-pointer, but then he will shoot an airball on a dribble drive from the wing into the lane.  

He can get quickly into the lane and to the rim from the perimeter as fast as anyone, even the greats.  Westbrook is patient and controlled with the ball in the paint and can hang in the air long enough to alter his shot to dodge a defender and then use the glass for a bank shot, or he will be able to find an open spot-up shooter for a kick out.  

He will make sophisticated moves where he creates space for himself by bouncing off contact he himself initiates for a mid-range jumper.  Westbrook will also use a stutter step or a change of pace and not always relies on being able to turn the corner with his quickness.

Westbrook is just about as good as anyone I've ever seen at splitting two defenders, both in a fastbreak situation and in the halfcourt, and, thus, he receives a great deal of Monta Ellis comparisons (Ellis can't compare defensively, and Westbrook has shown more promise as a point guard, so how high would Monta go in this draft if you were to automatically upload those two qualities to his game?).

He is by no means a great shooter at this point, but he should eventually evolve into an above average one; he just needs to become more relaxed and develop greater consistency through more experience and repetition.  He already is capable of shooting from 23-feet out with confidence.  Westbrook must become increasingly economical with his shot selection, as well; he gets too ambitious sometimes, and it leads to a short brick or innumberable charge calls when he drives.

There is a little hitch in his form when he brings his ball to his hairline that causes some inconsistencies and inexcusable left/right misses, but his follow-through is solid, and it is very compact and quick without any wasted motion.  He should, however, elevate with more regularity as a jump shooter, but he is just a few minor tweaks away from having very good shooting form overall.

When he doesn't have the ball in his hands, he moves extremely well, making weak side cuts to the bucket, smartly drifting to open space on the perimeter or getting himself low and wide when posting up a smaller man in the paint.

Westbrook also looks to move without the ball after making a pass instead of becoming a spectator.

In transition offense, Westbrook is probably at his best.  He has an insanely fast dribble in the open floor, covering  much ground in a few seconds, and then he has a second level of closing speed when he smells the bucket.  The way he flies to the rim for dunks is already part of YouTube lore, but he has more nuances than just speed and air arsenal.  Westbrook instinctively knows how to fill lanes and time his arrival with other players; plus, I've also seen him complete sophisticated crossover dribbles in the middle of a fastbreak.  

He is excellent at catching the ball and looks like he can step onto a football field as a wide receiver with the way he would catch those long outlet passes from Kevin Love.  He rarely fumbles the ball, catching it cleanly no matter if the pass is good or if he has to go up in the air for it.Also, he is solid on the handoff.

His abilities as a pure point guard are difficult to judge because he has played limited minutes at the position despite the early season injury to Darren Collison.  If we had a greater sample size to judge, Westbrook would probably be the third best prospect in this draft because of how well he does everything else.

What we can judge is how Westbrook performs when doing point guard-like duties.  He gets can break his man down off the dribble and will intuitively draw defenders to him to set up a shovel bounce pass for a lay-up.  He will also use a shovel pass to a trailer in transition for an easy dunk.  When he jumpstops into the lane instead of attempting an out of control runner, his decision-making improves ten-fold, and he becomes a highly effective and even imaginative passer.

His handle is very solid with either hand, but he is decidedly more comfortable when dribbling vertically instead of horizontally or in one place when running the offense.  It might be for that reason that he sometimes goes a little long around the screen on a pick-and-roll, negating some of its effectiveness.

Sometimes, he is mistake prone in setting up an offense if the available options are not obvious.  He'd be most ideally suited running a motion offense in which he can move instead of remaining just beyond the top of the key as he sometimes did when running the UCLA offense.

When he makes a mistake on the offensive end, such as he did against Arizona when he made a lazy pass that was picked off, he will sprint back to follow the play for a block attempt.

Any college sophomore who plays defense at such a high level almost automatically has great intangibles.  He clearly cares about the game and about getting better; his FIC40 nearly doubled from his freshman season (6.3 to 11.3).  

If you rate the 2008 Draft class as pure basketball players, I'm not sure Russell Westbrook would be included in the top-20 at this point in his development, but his feel for the game is so naturally sophisticated.  His fundamentals will eventually catch up with his instincts and athleticism, which will transform him into a player who can consistently make the types of plays on both sides of the floor we see only from the very elite.

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