Only last season, Russell Westbrook was a polarizing figure, as reckless, uncontrollable, and as damaged as he was brilliant. He was viewed with suspicion, if not disdain; for all his talent and desire to win, there was something almost willfully perverse about Russ. Haywire and perhaps malformed, his basketball mind felt unsuited—and perhaps indifferent toward—conventional measures of success and failure. Some (like myself) found this endlessly endearing. Others regarded it as heresy.

Somewhere along the line, all that changed. Maybe it was Kevin Durant’s exit, and Westbrook's subsequent decision to stay with the Thunder, that imbued Russ with moral fervor. While Russ himself may have cared very little about averaging a triple-double for the season, his pursuit was the biggest NBA story of 2016-17, casting his relentless, unyielding style of play in a whole new light. With an otherwise unremarkable Thunder team heading to the playoffs as the sixth seed in the West, it’s hard to criticize Westbrook for playing like a one-man team. And it certainly hasn’t hurt that Russ is now arguably the single most marketable figure in the league. The one-time misfit is now the poster child for fully-realized human potential. No longer a cult figure or an anti-hero, Russell Westbrook is now front and center in basketball’s cosmology.

Yet anti-Westbrook bias, while it may have softened or been driven underground, it still a very real thing. We saw it creep in once the triple-double chase was underway, in part because Russ racked them up with such apparent ease. It also didn’t help that the Thunder were only so good or that Westbrook appeared to be filling a gargantuan vacuum on the court. Early on, this backlash amounted to little more than fatigue or disinterest on the part of those so inclined and Westbrook’s ascent continued. Then it came to debate the MVP and suddenly these concerns became inescapable. James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, or LeBron James are all having MVP-caliber seasons and there’s a good case to be made for all of them. But there’s simply no way around it: RUSSELL WESTBROOK AVERAGED A TRIPLE-DOUBLE. And for some people, that’s not enough—or they’re just unwilling to let Westbrook enjoy this level of distinction.

Downplaying Westbrook’s accomplishment requires some serious shuffling of goalposts. At bare minimum, it involves dismissing traditional statistics so utterly that triple-doubles are arbitrary, even meaningless, with only advanced metrics presenting an accurate assessment of on-court value. Harden’s case over Westbrook also depends on how he helps those around him; individual defense and the Spurs’ record are Kawhi’s calling card; and while it sometimes works against him, LeBron James is still the single best player to build a championship-caliber team around—every year’s de facto MVP, even. There are merits to each of these.

Still, this really shouldn’t even be a debate. Westbrook is making history. Anyone attempting to ignore or downplay this fact is either too clever for their own good (we all fall in love with our takes) or simply doesn’t want to see Westbrook get the recognition he deserves. The MVP conversation has actually become more contentious as the season winds down. It’s hard not to see this as a sign of desperation.

"The blistering cases being made for Harden, Leonard, and James speak to a deeper anxiety around what Westbrook represents."

About a month ago, I started working on a piece about how, for yours truly—arguably the world’s biggest Russell Westbrook advocate —this season had been something of a disappointment. At first, I thought I was just being a snob. After all, jocking Westbrook had gone from vaguely subversive to decidedly mainstream. But I came to realize that my reaction wasn’t that superficial. Westbrook once was inexplicable, unjustifiable, and existing wholly on his own terms. His refusal to play by anyone else’s rules or follow anything but his own warped instincts had a strange kind of purity to it and gave rise to zealotry. Championing Russell Westbrook meant telling a lot of people they just didn’t get it—and maybe were looking at the entire sport the wrong way. Being pro-Westbrook was the best kind of rebellion, one that helped you find your way rather than simply reject things out of hand. The accepted basketball order fell to pieces and was immediately replaced by a new, aggressive idea that no one could quite pin down or control. Faith in Westbrook was a revolution in miniature.