Russell Westbrook Seen With Superstar Who Is Longtime Lakers Admirer

Newly-signed Lakers player Russell Westbrook had quality time with Lakers fan Jayson Tatum. The Boston Celtics star respects the Lakers and really appreciates their great accomplishment on the floor.

Lakers fans started talking about these two and you can imagine all the possible scenarios.

Tatum and Westbrook had a convo during an Usher concert in Las Vegas over the weekend. There’s nothing wrong with this, but we can’t ignore the fact that Tatum is a Lakers fan. He is not even hiding his appreciation for the purple and gold.

Westbrook and Tatum talking shop pic.twitter.com/85SEvCGUog

— Dymes (@NickeyDyme) August 8, 2021

Russell Westbrook wasn’t recruiting Tatum to the Lakers

Here’s the catch. Tatum is under contract with Boston through the 2025-26 NBA season. The Celtics will keep him around for at least five years as he signed his extension in November. Nice, right? Lakers fans won’t like this.

In a December 2020 interview with TNT, Tatum said he grew up with the idea of joining the Lakers at some point of his career.

“My favorite player and my idol was Kobe and everybody knows that,” Tatum told TNT in a December 2020 interview, per Audacy.com. “So, I didn’t like the Celtics at all. I only grew up, I was like, I’m going to play for the Lakers. Honestly, I never knew what Boston was at. Like I knew only East Coast. But, I’d never been there, I never thought about going there.”

In the regular season, Tatum shared a photo of himself. It’s a really awesome photo, but he is looking at the Lakers logo.  This happened during a game at the Staples Center. Tatum will have to wait a little longer before he puts on a Lakers uniform. Sherrod Blakely from Bleacher Report said that Tatum won’t end up on the trade block as expected.

“Tatum and Brown are as close to being untradeable as you will find, according to multiple league executives,” Blakely detailed in June. “But beyond those two, the Celtics are expected to listen as well as propose trades involving the rest of the players who will be under contract next season.”

Russell wasn’t trying to recruit Tatum, but he definitely called Trevor Ariza. They talked “20 minutes after he was traded.”

“It’s funny because Russ got traded, and 20 minutes after he was traded he was on my phone,” Ariza said, per Silver Screen and Roll. “So I don’t know if he was telling me he was happy to be home, or he wanted to go to dinner or whatever, I just know that he called my phone like ‘yo, what are you doing? Where are you at? I need to talk to you, I need to see you.’ …We kept in constant communication, and then it just so happened that I’m here.”