Troy Brown Jr. says one of the strangest moments of his time with the Lakers came when LeBron James and Russell Westbrook were trying to steer the same locker room in opposite directions.
On the Culture Shock podcast, Brown described a tense team setting during the 2022-23 season, when LeBron was pushing for urgency and wins while Westbrook was trying to ease the pressure and get everyone to loosen up.
“Russ wanted us to have fun. Like, that’s the part about it where it’s like, love Russ.
Like, he cares about people as people first. And I think that’s the part where sometimes the business side of it can blind that.”
“And so he was just like, you can feel the tension in the room. You could cut a knife with it.
It was bad. And so I think Russ wanted us to feel that relief and just enjoy the game and stop putting so much pressure on ourselves.
And so that’s where the clip kind of came from. Because Bron, ‘We need to take this momentum, and we need to win more games.
Let’s do exactly.’ And he’s being intense about it.
And Russ is like, ‘No, we need to have more fun.'”
“But bro, it was crazy. We all just started looking at each other in there.
Because that’s the part where I see both sides of the message. I just don’t know if they see both sides of each other’s message.
Because they might be butting heads if that’s the case or whatever. So yeah, man, crazy year.”
Brown said Westbrook’s message was rooted in concern for teammates, not a lack of competitiveness. It was, in Brown’s telling, a genuine attempt to help everyone breathe a little in a season that had already become heavy.
His comments add a fresh look at the difficult stretch the Lakers went through during Westbrook’s run in Los Angeles. Westbrook arrived in the summer of 2021 in a blockbuster trade with the Washington Wizards, joining LeBron and Anthony Davis to form a star-studded group that drew huge expectations.
It never came together the way the Lakers hoped. They finished the 2021-22 season at 33-49, under .500 and out of the playoffs. Westbrook had trouble settling into a new role, but Brown’s recollection points to a bigger picture: injuries, inconsistent play, and the roster around them all helped sink the team.
Brown came to the Lakers the next offseason, so he saw the final months of Westbrook’s time there up close. The team moved Westbrook to the Utah Jazz in February 2023 in a three-team deal that brought D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Malik Beasley to Los Angeles.
That reshaped group helped the Lakers get back to the playoffs, where they went on to reach the Western Conference Finals before being swept by the Denver Nuggets. Even so, Brown’s story makes clear that the LeBron-Westbrook disagreement wasn’t simply a case of one player being right and the other being wrong.
LeBron was pressing for momentum and wins while the Lakers were fighting for a postseason spot. Westbrook wanted the group to play freer and with less weight on its shoulders. Those are different messages, but both made sense in their own way.
Brown’s account also offers another angle on Westbrook’s leadership, which was often picked apart during his Lakers tenure. Brown, though, came away seeing the human side of it.
With Westbrook announcing his retirement in August 2026 after 18 NBA seasons, Brown’s memory serves as another reminder of the imprint he left on teammates, even in a year that was defined by friction and frustration.
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