The Denver Nuggets may have been laughed off the court by the New York Knicks on Monday night in a 145-118 defeat, but one of, if not the only silver lining of this crushing loss was the performance of veteran point guard Russell Westbrook. Westbrook started off slowly, much like the entire Nuggets team, but with Denver seemingly throwing the towel in the fourth quarter, putting all bench players in, the future Hall of Famer went to work.
Westbrook put up 24 of his 27 points on the night in the fourth quarter alone; he made eight of his 11 field-goal attempts in the period, and he was at least making the Nuggets competitive in a game that was otherwise already decided in favor of the Knicks. And in so doing, the 36-year-old point guard set a career-high in rather surprising fashion.
According to StatMuse on X (formerly known as Twitter), the 24 points that Westbrook scored in a single quarter is good for the most points he has scored in a single quarter for his entire career. The Nuggets guard simply went on a heater, and with the team’s big guns riding the bench after a lackluster performance, he had the greenest of lights as the team’s best playmaker and scorer on the floor — and he responded with an outstanding quarter even though it meant little in the grand scheme of the ballgame.
A lot has been made about Westbrook’s decline; many question just how productive he can be moving forward, especially for a Nuggets team with lofty contending aspirations. But one guarantee that Westbrook brings to the table is that he’ll be playing with boundless energy on a nightly basis, and it resulted in an incredible quarter that would have allowed the Nuggets to claw back into the game had they not been so lifeless on defense all game long.
Russell Westbrook turns back the clock despite Nuggets’ terrible night
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Russell Westbrook became just the third player aged 36 years or older to score 24 points or more in a single quarter, joining the likes of Michael Jordan and Jamal Crawford. The Nuggets guard managed to turn back the clock, even for a brief period.
In the fourth quarter, Westbrook got himself into an excellent rhythm after getting to the basket for his first two baskets of the period. From that point forward, the Nuggets veteran made four jumpshots, three of them being three-pointers, and he also made an impressive lefty and-one layup after slicing through the middle of the defense.