Now This Is a Story All About Russ …
How a visit from Will Smith and an Oscar-worthy fake smile turned Russell Westbrook against LeBron James for goodNow This Is a Story All About Russ …
How a visit from Will Smith and an Oscar-worthy fake smile turned Russell Westbrook against LeBron James for good
The following excerpt, from A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers, picks up in the summer of 2022. The Los Angeles Lakers are coming off a disastrous season. The Russell Westbrook trade has become an unmitigated debacle—one that cost head coach Frank Vogel his job. Finger-pointing within the organization is rampant. Everyone insists the trade was someone else’s idea, and everyone knows that for the Lakers to move forward, Westbrook has to go. The problem: His massive contract makes him nearly impossible to move. In the meantime, the onus is on new head coach Darvin Ham to find a way for LeBron and Westbrook to coexist. What he could have never predicted, though, was that a visit from Will Smith would make doing so all but impossible.
LeBron James strolled into Las Vegas’s Thomas & Mack Center, flanked by his security team. His arrival sent a jolt through the arena. Fans held up their cellphones. Photographers flocked toward him. Players, coaches, and executives congregating around the court came over to say hello. It was early July, and tipoff for the Lakers’ summer league squad’s first game was just a few minutes away.
An official escorted LeBron to a seat on the baseline. Throughout the game’s first half, new teammates like Thomas Bryant and Juan Toscano-Anderson paid their respects. So did Darvin Ham, Rob Pelinka, and Kurt Rambis. In the second half, Talen Horton-Tucker swung by. Seated across the court, on the opposite end of the floor, was Russell Westbrook.
He saw LeBron enter the gym before the game.
He didn’t budge.
The first quarter came and went.
He never crossed half court.
The second quarter reached its final minutes.
Westbrook rose from his seat and exited through a tunnel, never returning.
The scene became the talk of the night. Side-by-side images contrasting how LeBron and Westbrook had interacted at summer league the previous year—they’d entered the building together and sat next to each other—made the rounds on social media. The noninteraction was red meat for talking heads. It also sparked concerns within the team’s new coaching staff.
“We knew that we’d have to bring Westbrook off the bench eventually because things weren’t a good fit,” a Lakers coach said. “But seeing that play out that night it was like, ‘Oh, these motherfuckers aren’t even talking to each other.’”
The impetus appeared to be the recent rumors involving Kyrie Irving. LeBron’s former costar was entering the final season of his contract with the Nets, a $36.9 million player option, and wanted an extension. The Nets, however, were unwilling to hand over tens of millions of guaranteed dollars to a player who, since arriving in Brooklyn, had missed chunks of games for, among other things, a refusal to get a COVID vaccine and promoting an antisemitic film on social media. Recognizing he had no future in Brooklyn, Irving asked for a trade. The news had leaked in late June, with multiple outlets reporting that the Lakers were one of Irving’s preferred destinations and that LeBron wanted a reunion.
Negotiations between the Lakers and Nets went nowhere. Pelinka never showed any real interest in Irving. And even if he had, the Nets had no desire to take Westbrook back. Irving picked up his option and remained in Brooklyn, but by then the damage was done. Because of the NBA’s salary-matching rules, the only way for the Lakers to acquire Irving would have been by dealing Westbrook. Westbrook knew this, and he knew that LeBron did as well. Meaning that no matter what LeBron said in public, the reality was clear: He was pushing for the Lakers to ship Westbrook out.
The Lakers opened their season in mid-October with a 123-109 loss to the Warriors. Two nights later, in their home opener, Westbrook misfired on all 11 of his shots, and the Lakers fell to the Clippers, 103-97. Asked during his postgame press conference how he thought he played, Westbrook replied, “Solid. Played hard. That’s all you can ask for.” Three days later, on a Sunday afternoon, the Lakers were back on their home floor to take on the Blazers. This time their first win of the season was within their grasp.
With just 36 seconds remaining and clinging to a one-point lead, Westbrook brought the ball up the court. Instead of draining the clock, he dribbled directly into a 15-footer on the right wing. The shot ricocheted off the rim. Watching from the perimeter, both Anthony Davis and LeBron turned their palms toward the sky, putting their indignation on full display. The Lakers ended up losing 106-104, falling to 0-3.
After the game, one reporter asked LeBron about the team’s late-game “shot selection.” Another wanted to know, “basketball philosophy-wise,” how LeBron preferred to manage the clock late in games.
“I feel like this is an interview of trying to set me up to say something. I can tell that you guys are in the whole ‘Russell Westbrook category’ right now,” LeBron said. Later he added, “You guys can write about Russ and all the things you want to try to talk about Russ, but I’m not up here to do that. I won’t do it. I’ve said it over and over. That’s not who I am.”
Westbrook wasn’t buying it. To him, this was just the latest example of LeBron saying one thing but doing another. “People are saying, ‘Let Russ be Russ,’” he had told reporters the previous December. “I think nobody understands what that means. I think people just say it.” It was a clear shot at LeBron, and one Westbrook doubled down on after the season when asked about LeBron’s repeated use of the phrase.
“That wasn’t true,” Westbrook told reporters. “So let’s be honest.”
Westbrook knew LeBron’s reputation. He’d seen all the examples of LeBron seemingly misrepresenting himself. There was the time LeBron claimed that The Godfather was his favorite movie but then failed to recall a single line when asked during a press conference to name one.
There was the time he carried The Autobiography of Malcolm X into a media session but stumbled when asked to name his biggest takeaway. There was the time during an interview when he claimed that, the night Kobe scored 81 points, he’d predicted beforehand that he’d go for 70, a clip so widely mocked that it became a popular meme. LeBron’s reputation for bending the truth was so widespread that he even got teased while appearing in would-be safe spaces.
“They say you be cappin’,’’ Jacksonville Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey told him during a November 2022 episode of The Shop, a talk show produced by LeBron and Maverick Carter’s media company.
This, in Westbrook’s view, was who LeBron was. And he was done putting up with it.
Two days after losing to the Blazers, the Lakers were back at their facility for a practice. Pelinka informed the players a special guest would be coming through. He’d created a program called the Genius Series, where he’d bring in luminaries from various fields—Dwayne “The Rock’’ Johnson, Kendrick Lamar, Elon Musk—to address the team. For this day, he’d secured an A-lister: Will Smith, just six months removed from slapping Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards.
The team gathered in the film room to review the Blazers game. Ham was tough on the group, highlighting all sorts of mistakes that had led to the 0-3 start. When the session concluded, Pelinka came by.
He’d already shown Smith the practice court—they shot free throws together—and Jeanie Buss’s office. Now, he told the players, Smith was on his way to them.
When Pelinka and Ham left to fetch him, LeBron, seated in a middle row, stood up.
Y’all got this, he said.
He stormed out a back door.
Shit, man, Davis said.
He stood and followed LeBron out.
Stunned, the rest of the players sat there, looking at each other, unsure what to do.
“We’re like, ‘Yo, what the fuck is going on?’” one recalled.
Westbrook rose next.
So, we all leaving? he asked.
Nah, Russ, said Patrick Beverley, a brash veteran point guard the Lakers had acquired over the summer. We gotta stay.
Westbrook didn’t understand. What do you mean? he asked.
Them two guys can do whatever the fuck they want, Beverley said. They won a championship.
As the two went back and forth, it became clear to the other players in the room what Westbrook was thinking: As a nine-time All-Star, and former MVP, and future Hall of Famer, why would there be a difference between him and them?
Pelinka came back in.
We ready? he asked
We ain’t ready, Beverley said. We need five minutes.
Pelinka left.
Minutes later, Ham reentered and sat silently at the front of the room as Westbrook and Beverley continued arguing. He then stood up and exited through the same door LeBron and Davis had used. Soon after he returned with both stars. Next, Ham went to get Pelinka and Smith.
When they all returned, Smith was greeted with smiles and daps. Smith talked to the players about his new movie, Emancipation. He talked about overcoming adversity. He cracked some jokes at the team’s expense. Then he opened the floor for questions.
LeBron was first. He had a question, he said. Smith answered. Then LeBron had another question. And another after that and another after that and another after that. On and on he went, stretching what was supposed to be a 30-minute session into nearly an hour.
"The same guy who was trying to leave is now quoting back movie lines and going through the guy's whole life story," one attendee recalled thinking. Seated in the third row, picking at a bowl of fruit, Westbrook watched in disbelief, shaking his head and rolling his eyes every time LeBron spoke.
I hate that fake shit, Westbrook said to a teammate afterward, as the Lakers gathered for a team photo. I just can't do it.
The next afternoon, the Lakers posted the picture on social media.
Standing among Lakers players, coaches, and Pelinka was Smith, holding up a custom jersey. There, standing a few feet to Smith's right, was Westbrook, his face twisted into a scowl.
From A HOLLYWOOD ENDING: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers by Yaron Weitzman, to be published on October 21, 2025, by The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Yaron Weitzman.