The addition of Russell Westbrook hasn't quite helped the LA Clippers vault toward top-tier title contention. But their sustained inconsistency certainly isn't the fault of Westbrook, who's fared pretty much as well as could've been hoped with the Clippers individually after he signed with Ty Lue's team off the buyout market.

The former MVP is averaging 15.2 points, 4.8 rebounds and 7.8 assists per game with LA on what would be a career-high 55.6 true shooting percentage, just below league-average. A more telling sign of Westbrook's workable fit with the Clippers? He owns a +3.6 net rating in LA, per NBA.com/stats, a top-four mark on the team since his signing.

The Los Angeles Lakers, no surprise, didn't do as well with Westbrook on the floor before finally moving him at the February trade deadline. His net plus-minus with the Clippers' in-arena rivals was -17, an indicator of his multi-season struggles to find a niche alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis—despite Westbrook's personal numbers with the Lakers improving compared his debut campaign in purple-and-gold.

Breaking news: Personnel synergy matters, especially when slotting role players around high-usage superstars, let alone two. The types of players who thrive next to James and Davis re always going to be different than those at their best next to Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.

Ahead of the most significant matchup of the teams' shared history on Wednesday night, though, one NBA scout still can't believe the Lakers tried to change Westbrook's game to optimize his fit with James and Davis.

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“Asking Russ to be a 3-and-D guy is like asking Wilt [Chamberlain] to be a point guard,” an anonymous scout told Andrew Grief of the Los Angeles Times.

The notion Darvin Ham and company relegated Westbrook to a pure 3-and-D role this season is misinformed. His 27.6% usage with the Lakers was actually slightly higher than in 2021-22, once again exploding back to aggressive alpha-dog levels with James off the floor.

It's not like Los Angeles wasn't letting Russ be Russ. The biggest difference between his play with the Lakers and Clippers is that Westbrook has dialed his usage back to career-low levels, committed harder to defense and is finally hitting some mid-range jumpers.

Combined with LA's desire for an experienced set-up man and ability to space the floor around him with at least three shooters, those developments hardly make Westbrook's success with the Clippers a shock—nor any indictment of how the Lakers tried to make his ill-fated partnership with James and Davis work.