There was no getting around the fact that the Los Angeles Lakers' trade for Russell Westbrook in 2021 was a spectacular failure. Westbrook was supposed to give the Lakers a third star alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis. However, the Lakers were just unable to overcome the fit issues that have defined Westbrook's one and a half-year stint in LA.

Thus, it wasn't that shocking when the Lakers finally pulled the trigger on a trade that sent the 2017 NBA MVP to the Utah Jazz (along with a top-four protected 2027 first-round pick), in exchange for D'Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Malik Beasley.

Even then, it got to a point where it wasn't quite clear what the Lakers would do with Russell Westbrook and his expiring contract. But in a hypothetical scenario where the Lakers were unable to trade away the mercurial point guard, Brian Windhorst of ESPN said that there was a possibility that the Lakers would have just kept Westbrook inactive, sent him home, and carried on without him in the lineup.

“I would almost say that if Russell Westbrook was not traded yesterday, that there was a decent chance that the Lakers would have sent him home. I don't even think LeBron personally dislikes him, I just think that the effect on each other on the court was a negative,” Windhorst said in his appearance on Stephen A. Smith's First Take.

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Windy wasn't done:

Now, it's somewhat unclear why the Lakers would do this in a hypothetical world, even with this harsh take from Windy. Surely it would have more sense for them to squeeze every ounce of productive basketball Westbrook has left, especially when paying him upwards of $47 million this season.

Nevertheless, this is an example of a situation where we will never know what the true outcome would have been.