The Thunder Came Very Close to Drafting Brook Lopez Over Russell Westbrook in 2008

Former coach P.J. Carlesimo admits the Thunder almost drafted Brook Lopez over Russell Westbrook in 2008.

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If the Thunder didn’t have Russell Westbrook on their team right now, there’s a pretty good chance they wouldn’t be up 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals against the Warriors. Hell, if the Thunder didn’t have Russell Westbrook on their team right now, there’s a pretty good chance they wouldn’t even be in the Western Conference Finals, and you could even make the argument that, at this point in time, they would have a completely different team surrounding Kevin Durant and wouldn’t be as good as they are today. Westbrook is the heart and soul of the Oklahoma City team so, without him, who knows where they would be?

But despite that, there was actually a time when the Thunder were torn over whether or not to select Westbrook, who played his college ball at UCLA, with the fourth pick in the 2008 NBA Draft. Derrick Rose, Michael Beasley, and O.J. Mayo went first, second, and third that year in the draft ahead of Westbrook (welp) and the Thunder weren't sure if they should take Westbrook or Brook Lopez at No. 4. And according to the team’s former coach P.J. Carlesimo, who was with the franchise in 2007 and 2008 when they were still the Seattle SuperSonics, he actually pushed for the team to take Lopez over Westbrook. He talked about it during a “One Awesome Story” segment on ESPN Radio’s Russillo & Kanell on Wednesday and ‘fessed up to the mistake he almost made.

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You can listen to Carlesimo tell the whole story in the video above. You can also read a transcript of the portion of the story that features Carlesimo talking about the Westbrook vs. Lopez debate below:

It came down to Brook Lopez or Russell Westbrook…We went back and forth and we really liked both of them. It wasn’t like half the group didn’t like this guy, half the group did. We liked both of them a lot for obvious reasons. We needed a big in the worst way. We certainly needed a point guard, too, but the conventional wisdom is always bigs are harder to come by. But I think back to even, during that year, Earl Watson, now the coach of Phoenix, he was our point guard. Him and Luke Ridnour, they’re playing point guard for us, and Earl came to me a couple times, and UCLA is one of those places—Carolina, there’s a couple others—where players go back and they play a lot against each other. So you walk into UCLA’s gym, the old gym where John Wooden conducted practices, you go into that gym and there will be 10 or 15 NBA guys playing there in the summer. Now, it’s in L.A., of course, but a lot of UCLA guys. And Earl told me for years, he said, ‘Coach, the best player there wasn’t Darren Collison. It wasn’t the other guys they had playing point guard.' He said, ‘It’s Russell Westbrook.’ And he didn’t start as a freshman and then he was a Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore. He said, ‘This kid is unbelievable.’ Earl was bubbling over about how good he was and how great he was going to be for [former UCLA basketball coach] Ben Howland even before that year started.

Lopez was eventually selected at No. 10 by the Nets. Can you even imagine how differently things could have worked out for Westbrook, Durant, and the Thunder as a whole if Carlesimo had gotten his way?

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