It may have been the crooning and the giggling on Media Day on Friday afternoon. Maybe it was barking out coverages during practice. Or perhaps the screaming at the top of his lungs for no particular reason, a staple of Thunder practices, but on Day One of US Cellular Thunder Training Camp, Russell Westbrook managed to go from a holler to a whisper.
“I lost my damn voice, but that means it’s a good thing,” Westbrook said. “Everybody came in and competed at a high level. We got some stuff done, especially on the defensive end, which we can make our staple.”
Second-year Head Coach Billy Donovan was finally, officially, able to be at the helm on Saturday morning when the team assembled for its first mandatory practice. While there was much excitement about being back together as a unit, the practice was all about business. With Westbrook serving in a pivotal on-court role, Donovan and his staff embarked on what will be a year-long crusade: preparing his team for a postseason run by finding the best strategies, player groupings and rotations.
“It’s trying to get everybody on the same page philosophically as it relates to trying to create a system and an identity for ourselves,” Donovan said. “It was good for the first day to have everybody together and being able to work together.”
Thunder fans have been waiting with bated breath for the first practice of the 2016-17 season, but of course there’s not a ton to be gleaned from just one session. What can be done, however, is precisely what the coaching staff began on Saturday – to install the core style of play and begin installing not just schemes, but an identity.
“You have to set your team around defense and we have a lot of great players who can defend at a high level, so we have to use that,” Westbrook said.
“That’s the biggest thing about defense – believing in and trusting in the person next to you,” fellow backcourt extraordinaire Victor Oladipo added.
This Thunder squad has a completely different look than the 2015-16 bunch that came up one game short of the NBA Finals, but it’s objectives remain the exact same: to compete for a championship. That starts as early as the first day of training camp – to set the tone for what type of team this Thunder squad wants to be not just in Game 1 or Game 82, but Games 60 and 70.
Oladipo, a newcomer to the organization this summer, praised his teammates for their high level defensive skill – highlighting Westbrook, Andre Roberson and Steven Adams. He explained that now in his fourth NBA season he sees it clearly – in order to be successful, not only does the team need to believe that their back is covered by another in the same color jersey, but there must be a commitment to win every possession.
“The biggest thing is our effort and what we bring to the table every possession and how we value every possession defensively,” Oladipo said. “We can’t control too many things in the course of the game but we can control our defensive effort and being in the right places.”
That attitude doesn’t just bubble up out of nowhere. It’s bred and developed. It’s drilled. It’s taught every day at Thunder training camp, and with four weeks to go before the first regular season game, it’s the tone the Thunder coaching staff wanted to set from the very start.
WATCH: Training Camp Day One Recap
Westbrook’s Pop-up Shop in Midtown
Russell Westbrook’s brand is worldwide. His reach, nearly unable to quantify. Internationally, he’s a star because of what he does on the basketball court but he’s also an entrepreneur off of it, in the fashion world.
So here he was, on Saturday afternoon at the Nault Fine Art Gallery in Midtown Oklahoma City, unveiling for the very first time his Fall 2016 collection with True Religion. Oklahomans shuffled through the gallery as they perused the clothing on display, and Westbrook mingled among them to admire the physical execution of his own design work. There were hoodies and jackets, long t-shirts and pants, all with rips, distressing, ergonomic darts and True Religion and Russell Westbrook logos helping to make them unique.
“I take both (basketball and fashion) serious,” Westbrook said. “I can’t play basketball forever so there are definitely other things that I’m able to do. Fashion is something I love to do.”
The event was a hit, but what was most notable was that this unveiling didn’t occur in New York or Los Angeles or Milan. The debut and very first chance for anyone, anywhere to purchase this clothing line came in Oklahoma City.
“Russell was incredibly excited to be back in Oklahoma City,” said Tara Peyrache, Chief Marketing Officer for True Religion. “It was very important for him, as he explained for us, that he wanted to debut his collection here. He was incredibly thankful and grateful for the fan support. We really felt like it couldn’t be a better place for a town to see the collection he had such a heavy hand in before the world got a chance to see it.”