Russell Westbrook is Tom Hanks in ‘Cast Away’

Russell Westbrook’s best friend’s name is Spalding. Spalding is a bald, rotund fellow on the shorter side with a ruddy complexion. He has a bouncy personality, rebounds quickly from his mistakes, and tends to just roll with whatever his friends are into. Spalding doesn’t say much because Spalding can’t talk.

The reason Spalding can’t talk is because Spalding is a basketball.

Russ announced his best-friendship with an inanimate object over the weekend. He and James Harden both told TNT that despite being good friends off the court, they’d cut off all communication during the Rockets-Thunder first-round playoff series. A few days later, Russ gently chastised reporters for thinking he was joking when he said that Spalding was his only friend. He was not joking. He was so, so, so, serious.

“I think y’all misunderstood what I was saying. Y’all don’t understand the importance of what I was saying. You think it’s a joke or some shit. This is a serious thing. This is something that’s important. I only have one friend; the basketball is my only friend. Like, all these guys are my brothers. My teammates are my brothers. James is a friend of mine; there’s other friends that I have in the league. But at the same time, when I get on the floor, this is, this is [gestures to Spalding] the most important thing for me and this is how I do what I need to do so it’s actually not a joke, that’s real shit, so, just to make that note.”

I love this quote so much because it’s Peak Russ. It’s one more beautiful result of his long-running, “Russ against the world” mentality. And he makes a good point — if he’s going to be as ruthless on the court as possible, he has to be as focused as he can.

But this also speaks to Russ’ interpersonal style. You know that old saying, “No man is an island?” This is particularly true in professional team sports — it’s hard to play a basketball game against another five-person team all by yourself.

But this season, Russ has come as close to being an island as anyone’s been. After Kevin Durant ditched for Golden State, Russ went on a Spite Tour to end all Spite Tours. He put up a historic season, becoming the first player to average a triple-double since 1962.

He basically carried the Thunder — his brothers, as he called them, and brothers are not necessarily friends — on his back. Remember when he scored 57 points against the Magic? He also made a big, petty show of not caring about KD, even though his actions spoke otherwise.

In other words: Russ’s whole shtick this year has been “no new friends.” Actually, no; it’s been “no old friends.” Wait, sorry, trying one more time: “No friends at all.”

Think about it: Russ burned Durant with real-life subtweets all season long. And before the All-Star game, as everyone was warming up on one end of the court, Russ was on the other side by himself. There was a heartwarming moment when Harden joined him, sure, and Russ did score on a pass from Durant, a moment that sports media made seem on par with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt getting back together.

But for the most part, Russ is out there shaking down coconuts off trees playing basketball all alone on a deserted patch of sand basketball court.

In fact ... [sighs] ... OK, I’ve tried to avoid it, but you know what? Let’s bring this metaphor full circle, because I can’t fight it anymore: Russell Westbrook is Tom Hanks in Cast Away. He’s a dude out there all by himself, fighting for his life, whose best friend is a sports ball. A volleyball, in fact, named Wilson.

I never saw Cast Away, because I’ve never seen a single movie in my entire life and grew up under a rock on a virtual, pop-culturally deserted island in Massachusetts, so I’m not sure what happens. But my co-workers just told me that [SPOILER ALERT] Tom Hanks ends up getting off the island, only to find out that his wife is sleeping with someone else.

I hope Russ has better luck, but I’m struggling to come up with the basketball metaphor that would correspond to the end of the movie. Maybe it’s that he eventually gets traded to the Warriors too, only to arrive and find out that Durant and Steph Curry are now having sleepovers. Eh, that feels thin plot-wise. But you get the point.

I do know, despite never having seen Cast Away, that Tom Hanks loses Wilson. And I am comforted by the fact that while Hanks only had one Wilson to count on, Russ has, like, a million Spaldings, given that he spends his life in professional basketball centers, and professional basketball centers are chock-full of basketballs. So while Russ might cut ties with humans, he will never, ever lose his best, anthropomorphized friend.

Which just might be the reason he’s such a gifted basketball player.

Thanks to my colleagues Matt Ufford and James Dator for the Photoshops that my Luddite ass couldn’t figure out how to do.