The story behind my Russell Westbrook story

A behind-the-scenes look at my profile of the former NBA MVP for Forbes

Hey newsletter fam,

Doing something a little different today for our Tuesday newsletter. Some of you may have seen that on Sunday, my profile of Russell Westbrook came out for Forbes.

I know I enjoy reading process pieces about the making of movies, shows or other things I enjoy, so I figured I’d try to put you into my shoes and walk through what went into putting this story out into the world.

If you enjoy this kind of content, let me know by replying to this email (or commenting below, if you’re looking online). If you think I’m a narcissistic navel gazer and should go back to posting funny TikTok links on Tuesdays, tell me that too. Either way, let’s dive in.

Credit: Forbes (obviously)

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I’ve started to form my own theory about the journalism profession, or at least what it’s become after years of financial turmoil (borderline insolvency). Where for many decades it may have been considered a “trade,” one that could be counted on for reliable employment in basically any city in America, journalism is now an aspirational career — most similar to acting, comedy or becoming a rockstar: many thousands of people want to become one, fewer thousands of people try, most eventually give up or are cast aside, a few people “make it” enough to sustain a lasting career, and a handful rise to the level of great success and notoriety.

In this new journalism landscape, every big story can feel like an audition. This is your chance, you tell yourself, to prove that you are good enough to do this journalism thing. Maybe, just maybe, this could be your big break.

It’s undue pressure, to be sure, especially just for a story about a person who’s already super rich trying to become even more rich, as was the case here. The stakes are very low, but the level of emotional investment is almost unavoidable (I’ve had many conversations with journalists at every level of success, and the imposter syndrome really never goes away).

To strain this metaphor a little further…if feature stories are an audition, then Russell Westbrook as a subject is like a particularly tricky monologue. He can be extremely prickly toward reporters, famously so, and the morning before I was to meet him I reread what I consider the definitive Westbrook profile by Sam Anderson in The New York Times, and winced at how hard Westbrook tried to make the reporter’s job more difficult.

So, the most commonly asked question after an encounter with a famous person: what is he or she really like?

Obviously, that answer was especially meaningful to me, having grown up in Oklahoma and being in high school during Westbrook and the OKC Thunder’s run to the NBA Finals in 2012 (I had to be professional, of course, and not tell him that I had a poster of him on my bedroom wall). Though Westbrook was no longer a “hero” of mine in any meaningful sense, I’d hate to have my childhood ruined by a case of “don’t meet your heroes.”

Thankfully, my first interaction with Westbrook was so quintessentially him it pretty much answered all my questions immediately.

His assistant entered first, carrying in a zipped garment bag an outfit that Westbrook had carefully chosen to wear (his camp asked our photographer beforehand what color backdrop we were using so he could compliment it). Tan linen suit, white collared shirt, black boots. I breathed a sigh of relief for how conservative it was, knowing my on-camera interview with him would look ridiculous if I was dressed like a Forbes square and he showed up in a clown costume.

Then Westbrook arrived and went into his office to change. I could overhear him say to the assistant that he was thinking going no-shirt would look hot but wasn’t sure if it was okay. His assistant came out to ask for permission, given the Forbes of it all, and then a few minutes later he came out bare chested.

To me, that said everything. Westbrook was meticulous, obsessive about every tiny detail. He couldn’t help himself when it came to radical self-expression. And above all for my purposes, he really wanted Forbes to see him as a respectable businessman.

All of which is to say that he couldn’t have been nicer or more respectful of me and our crew, during the photoshoot, on-camera interview or later for the hour we talked in his conference room.

Opening oneself up to be interviewed and profiled is no easy thing, but I suspect that for him it was all about seeing himself on that Forbes cover (nevermind that it’s only a digital cover, not print). Westbrook’s social media post proves, in my opinion, that he felt like an endorsement from Forbes would be validation for just how far he’s come from his humble beginnings.

I knew I wanted the “lede,” or opening, of my story to be about this shirtless moment, despite the very accurate note from my editor that setting the scene at the photoshoot was a hacky writing move which only proved how little time I had with him (he’s not wrong). It was still the right thing, I felt, because it said so much about him while saying so little, and I also loved the contrast between his overt sexiness in the photos and intentional un-sexiness of his business. Let Lebron have Hollywood and CJ McCollum have wine, Russ was taking car parts.

From there, much of the story was constructed by talking to Westbrook’s network — another element under-appreciated by most readers (and crappy journalists). A story of this length had four people quoted in it, but over the course of the reporting I probably spoke to more than 10. Doing so allows you to corroborate information, gather perspectives, and sort the useful anecdotes from the hollow compliments. It’s what makes a story good.

Personal feelings aside, Westbrook was a fascinating figure to dig into both on and especially off the court. It surprised me, since for most players the “r word” (retirement) is forbidden to be mentioned, how open Westbrook was to talk about his basketball career ending. Perhaps that’s because he has an equally clear vision for what he wasn’t his post-basketball life to look like. And he has an equally ambitious goal: to become a billionaire.

Lately, our SportsMoney team at Forbes has been hearing that sentiment a lot. After we declared Lebron James and Tiger Woods billionaires last year (the latter being my story!) , a lot of successful athletes predisposed with limitless ambition have begun to publicly declare their desire to join the Three Comma Club.

Working for Forbes specifically, this financial reporting is the hardest part of the job. Imagine if someone came to you and asked you how much money you had in the bank, how much money you made last year, and what you’ve spent it on. Talking about money is uncomfortable, so there’s always conflict in reporting out those figures. Most times we cannot get them directly, so work must be done to come to confident estimates.

Even if it’s just one line in the story, a huge amount of time was spent valuing each of Westbrook’s assets and income streams to come to both a net worth valuation and earnings estimation. This isn’t just to be nosy, it proves the legitimacy (or not) of these athletes’ business ambitions. In many ways, this hard work has turned Forbes into a database as much as a storytelling apparatus. Everyone else just aggregates out our money figures and moves on.

So yeah, the final destination for this story is going to be a Google search result for “how rich is Russell Westbrook?” People will see $375 million in bold letters at the top without ever clicking on our link.

Still it’s a story I’m proud to have worked on and published. The photography turned out great, ditto the cover design, the video interview and the story copy. What’s crazy is that an idea that begins in your head or your email inbox can come to employ four photography crew, three video crew, two editors, a designer, a video editor, and a social media team. I don’t take any of that for granted. And ultimately, even in this messed up 2023 journalism world, I can’t think of any better way to make a living than storytelling.