



1 / 10 Chevron Chevron Photograph by Zach Beeker / OKC Thunder Russell Westbrook, taking full advantage of the media attention that basketball players receive as they enter the bowels of an arena before a game.

Lovers of basketball, and of the culture that surrounds the modern N.B.A., owe an unpaid debt of gratitude. Whoever first decided to install a little camera somewhere in the bowels of each arena that could capture a simple image of players walking the several yards to the locker room from outside deserves some kind of medal, or honorary admission into the Hall of Fame. That unassuming entrance angle has, over time, enabled one of the best aspects of the broadcast. Pre-game, especially during the playoffs, a little fashion show sprouts up, complete with commentary (razzing, baffled, mournful) from the in-studio commentators. The players strut, costumed, through the tunnel, usually pretending not to notice the lens.

The master of this accidental, organically developed form is Russell Westbrook, the N.B.A.’s reigning M.V.P., whose peacocking, frequently jokey sartorial displays are only amplified by his attitude toward the camera, and, really, toward the media at large: unstated but total scorn. When, last season, he showed up to a game against the Golden State Warriors dressed in a fluorescent photographer’s vest—a clear shot at his former teammate, Kevin Durant, who had taken up photography as a hobby—the visual joke was made funnier, and somewhat subtler, by the certainty that Westbrook would never admit that he’d made it.

Westbrook’s interest in fashion is an increasingly large part of his off-court profile. He has teamed up with brands such as Barneys and True Religion, launched his own line of eyewear, and become a fixture at fashion weeks in the U.S. and abroad. He recently signed a new endorsement deal with Jordan Brand that is reportedly the most lucrative in the company’s history. In an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show,” he wore a vintage Gucci T-shirt and a pair of tapered Pepto-pink sweatpants, swallowed at the cuffs by a pair of thick tube socks. Around his waist was tied a matching top. As usual, it was hard to say whether this was the sincere expression of an off-kilter, wide-ranging taste, or a bit of mockery directed at those of us who cared what he had on.

The same question might pertain to Westbrook’s glossy new coffee-table book, “Style Drivers” (Rizzoli). The book, a prettily arranged showcase for its author’s journey in fashion so far, is full of quotations—on style, perseverance, individuality, life—by a bevy of celebrity pals, including Serena Williams, Pusha T, and DJ Khaled. “Minimize your exposure to everything ersatz,” the Barneys creative-ambassador-at-large Simon Doonan offers in his introduction. Serena Williams says, of her stratospheric success, “You have to be willing to make incredible sacrifices.” Here and there are original sketches by the punk artist Raymond Pettibon. The book’s primary focus, though, is Westbrook’s many Technicolor outfits, worn outdoors, in pastel-hued studios, and, especially, at fashion shows. On one two-page spread, he poses in a peacoat with oversized buttons, a blurred, twinkling pinky ring playing against a bracelet. On another, he walks through midtown, blithely ignoring the camera, wearing mirror-like shades, torn jeans, and a graffitied black shirt. (Given Westbrook’s well-earned image as a loyal denizen of Oklahoma City, where he plays, it’s a bit jarring, as a Knicks fan, to see him, here, as a kind of honorary New Yorker.) Elsewhere in the book is a glimpse of him in a vest that is half-leather and half-denim, seated next to Anna Wintour, at the front row of a fashion show.

Anna Wintour and Westbrook attend a Rag & Bone fashion show in New York City, September, 2013. Photograph by Ben Gabbe / Getty

Earlier this month, I spoke to Westbrook over the phone. The scope of our talk was tightly circumscribed: I’d been directed beforehand only to ask about fashion generally and “Style Drivers” in particular: no basketball, nothing touching on the upcoming season. Fair enough, but the task felt barely possible—I’ve come to think of Westbrook’s manner of dress as inextricable, on some level, from the way he acquits himself on the court. In both arenas, he seems interested more in expression than rote utility, and is, in this way, more artist than competitor, more couturier than stylish pedestrian. Last season, his incredible exploits notwithstanding—Westbrook averaged a triple-double and broke the N.B.A. record for triple-doubles in a season, previously held by the great Oscar Robertson—one always had the suspicion that his team might have fared better had he adopted a slightly less riveting mode of attack on the floor. While LeBron James paced himself, so that he could be at his peak performance level during the playoffs, and Steph Curry took a self-effacing step back in order to accommodate his new teammate Durant, Westbrook took each game—each dart-like elbow jumper, each heart-stopping drive to the rim—as an opportunity to stretch the outer limits of basketball as an aesthetic proposition. His team did all right: they made it to the playoffs, where they lost in the first round. But sometimes the score scarcely seemed to matter. Watching the Thunder felt like settling in beside a runway and watching the models—well, the model—saunter by. To fault Westbrook for the number in the team’s loss column was to miss the point. (He would probably disagree with this, but it was not a subject of our conversation.)

Westbrook’s bent toward this sort of wordless communication—on the court, on the streets of New York—sits in striking juxtaposition with his famous aversion to the media. Some of his distaste seems to mirror the Thunder’s broader culture; the franchise is notoriously protective of its players. (Durant, the Thunder’s most eminent alum, was recently caught seemingly directing his own defense on Twitter.) Still, Westbrook—who has often been the target of the media’s ire, especially when, as Durant’s teammate, he stubbornly took the lion’s share of the team’s shots—seems especially resistant to the wiles of the press.

Westbrook’s sneakers during Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors, in Oklahoma City, May, 2016. Photograph by Maddie Meyer / Getty

When I asked how much thought he put into his much-discussed pregame outfits, he said, “My main focus is going to play . . . I’ve been doing the same thing since I came into the league, and now people are paying attention.” Would fashion be his main focus after retirement from basketball? “It’s definitely one of them, for sure.” Does he have a favorite designer? “No. I like different designers for different reasons and different seasons, honestly.” Does he have a favorite kind of outfit, one he’d wear if his only consideration were comfort? “I do not. It really depends if it’s hot or it’s cold, or it’s snowing or it’s raining. It depends.”

“Good point,” said his publicist, who was also on the phone.

It struck me, as I tried to elicit a response even fractionally as interesting as his wardrobe, or his eloquent arsenal of moves on the court, that Westbrook has found a way to give the public exactly what he’d like to give and nothing more. In our age of total—if always somewhat feigned—transparency, and the sudden blowback that often follows, he speaks loudly with his clothes and with the exhilaration that attends his play, and otherwise withholds. There’s something appropriate, then, about “Style Drivers,” studded as it is with other people’s insights and Westbrook’s own mild appeals to hard work and individual thought. Who else could put out a whole book while offering so little grist for the media’s mill? (Another commandment from Doonan: “Taunt your enemies.”) Style is control; Westbrook exerts both as a matter of course. In doing so, he reveals the irony of the little TV camera that brought high fashion to the pregame show. By extending their reach into a seemingly mundane aspect of life in the N.B.A.—nothing, after all, is more perfunctory than walking into work—the networks created a new channel of communication, player to fan, and, therefore, gradually relinquished a measure of their own power. In noticing and so colorfully exploiting this state of affairs, as he would a too slow defender or a faulty scheme, Russell Westbrook—as in so much else—leads the way.