Westbrook and George: Just bad news against sportswriters

There’s no doubting the basketball talents of Russell Westbrook and Paul George. They are without question among the top 10 players in the NBA, with Westbrook among the top five and easily the league’s best point guard.

Westbrook and George are teammates with the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are on the verge of being eliminated from the NBA Western Conference playoffs by the Portland Trailblazers. The Thunder trails the Blazers, 3-1. The season is almost over.

For the last four years, Westbrook has endured a cantankerous relationship with Oklahoman sports columnist Berry Tramel. No one knows exactly when the relationship soured between Tramel and Westbrook, but the two don’t get along at all.

To Tramel’s credit, he continues to try to do his job. So Sunday, after the Thunder dropped a 111-98 decision to the Blazers to go down 3-1 in the series, Tramel asked both players legitimate questions.

And the response from both Westbrook and George were the same as they were all season.

“Next question,” is all that Westbrook and George had to say to Tramel, just like the response has been for the last four years, even before George got there. That’s all the players had to say. Next question. Over and over again.

It’s not like Tramel is asking personal questions. Every single time, Tramel is restricted to ask basketball related and themed questions. But the answers are always the same. Next question.

Frankly, it’s downright rude, extremely arrogant and egotistical and it’s wrong. Tramel, one of the best sports columnists in the Midwest for 40 years, deserves to have the questions answered like civilized adults instead of spoiled rotten children.

And the “next question” approach is now annoying. There are some sports outlets, like radio and television shows and internet spots that are finding Westbrook’s answers are hysterical.

But as a sportswriter, I am so totally angered by Westbrook and George.

Just answer the questions. Fans want to know what their stars are thinking, especially when their beloved team is on the brink of elimination.

Russell Westbrook and Paul George should be forced to answer the questions. The NBA should levy serious fines against the players if they continue to sit in the post-game press conferences and answer the questions from Tramel the same way. Like serious fines, not just a slap of the wrist. If the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver slapped Westbrook with a $200,000 fine, you can be guaranteed that the “next question” crap would become a slice of history.

I mean, the NBA’s assistant commissioner Kiki Vandeweghe, a former NBA All-Star, slapped Brooklyn Nets general manager Sean Marks $25,000 for entering the official’s locker room after Game 4 of the Nets-Sixers series to complain about calls. And Marks isn’t making the kind of cash that Westbrook makes.

If Silver stepped in and hit Westbrook with a major fine for being a nuisance, you can be rest assured that this circus would become history.

It has to stop. It’s setting a bad precedence that could permeate throughout the entire league, or better yet, professional sports on a whole. If an athlete doesn’t like a reporter, the answers might be the same. Next question. And sportswriters would never be able to get their jobs done.

It’s bad enough that newspapers are drying up and folding left and right. Now, we’re getting prima donna  athletes deciding to sit at post-game pressers and act like total jackasses. Next question.

I keep getting asked whether the football Giants made a good trade with the Cleveland Browns, whether they got enough in return for the incredibly talented Odell Beckham, Jr.

I remember vividly seeing OBJ at the first rookie training camp, running crisp routes, jumping high for passes and more incredibly catching passes with one hand and telling anyone who wanted to listen that the Giants got the steal of the draft, that they had acquired what I called “the second coming of Jerry Rice.”

I sincerely thought that OBJ was clearly the best receiver I’d ever seen live and that he was destined to become a Hall of Famer – all in one day’s workout.

And I believed that OBJ was destined for greatness.

But then, all of the other crap started, like making like a dog after scoring a touchdown and simulating peeing in the end zone in Philly or proposing marriage to the kicking net to to saying what teams he wanted to get traded to.

The Giants had enough faith in Beckham that they gave him the max contract, the $95 million bonanza last summer. It was a contract filled with incentive clauses and signing bonuses. OBJ became a very rich man courtesy of John Mara and the Giants organization.

And when OBJ said a few weeks ago that there were two teams that he wanted to get traded to – the Browns and the 49ers – Mara had heard enough and told Gettleman to get rid of OBJ.

So the Giants got a middle of the round 1^st round pick (17^th overall), a third rounder and a former first rounder in New Jersey native Jabrill Peppers, who has been less than stellar in his tenure with the Browns.

Is that fair trade value for a guy who I once thought was going to be the best receiver in the history of the game? There’s no way. The Giants did not get fair value for OBJ. But they did get two serviceable picks and a player who the Giants organization feels will be a solid strong safety, replacing the All-Pro in Landon Collins who they didn’t re-sign and let walk free to the Redskins.

So I don’t think the Giants got fair value for OBJ. I think the Browns made out in the trade. But the Giants didn’t exactly get fleeced.

And as for the draft, I don’t think the Giants are taking a quarterback. I think the Giants are going to take a defensive playmaker, like an edge rusher.

And as for the Jets, I think they will also go defensive and take someone like Josh Allen from Kentucky. But I think the best defensive player in the draft is Ed Oliver of Houston, who is the second coming of Aaron Donald of the Rams. Oliver has the same kind of motor and has the same explosive ability to get off the ball. If either the Jets or the Giants are able to take Oliver, they should. He’s that good.

In all my years, I’ve never seen a team get devastated with injuries like the way the Yankees have been ravaged this year.

With the injury to Aaron Judge, an oblique injury that may keep Judge out of action for the better part of the next two months, the Yankees have 14 players on the injured list. That’s a correct number – 14. It’s absurd.

Are the injuries enough to send the Bronx Bombers reeling for the rest of 2019? Sure, it’s early yet, but it’s surely possible that the Yankees could be in serious trouble. Did anyone catch the lineup they fielded Sunday against a bad Kansas City team? There were a bunch of nobodies in pinstripes on the field masquerading as Yankees.

Mike Ford, Tyler Wade, Mike Tauchman and Gio Urshela. Are they the New Kids on the Block? Or the New York Yankees? “Tyler, Mikey, Gio and Mike, if I like the girl, who cares who you like? You got to cool it down, now. You’re gonna lose control.” Sounds like a 90s tune.

You can read more of my work at www.hudsonreporter.com and www.theobserver.com