Is Russell Westbrook in denial about failure with Lakers?

Russell Westbrook's homecoming tour in Los Angeles was anything but memorable.

The L.A. native had long expressed dreams of lacing up his sneaks for the purple and gold, but once his dream became reality, it turned out to be more nightmarish than idyllic.

Despite posting fair numbers on a nightly basis (18.5 points, 7.4 rebounds, 7.1 assists), his propensity for missed shots (43.8% from the field), high-volume turnovers (3.8 per game), and on-court tiffs outweighed his positive contributions. 

And many have aimed blame in his direction for a good portion of the Lakers' struggles. But Westbrook himself had other thoughts as to what went wrong in Tinseltown this season.

"When I first got here, the ability to be able to do what I'm able to do for a team and an organization wasn't given a fair chance," he told reporters in his season exit interview Monday. "Yeah, [LeBron James and Anthony Davis said ‘let Russ be Russ’], but that wasn't true."

Westbrook added that Frank Vogel's apparent dissatisfaction with him was a development he didn't particularly understand. 

"I think it's unfortunate, to be honest, because I've never had an issue with any of my coaches before," he said regarding Vogel. "I'm not sure what his issue was with me, or I'm not sure why, but I can't really give you an answer to why we really never connected."

He made sure to take a portion of the responsibility, though. 

"Just my play in general, not my best season, just going off my own personal scale," he said. "Obviously I'm coming off averaging a triple-double, so anything less than that would not be a good season for me in my eyes, you know what I'm saying? So that's why the scale of where it comes from is a little bit different."

Despite Westbrook's concession, Nick Wright claimed that the guard was in denial. He compared Westbrook to another former star whose decline in the late 2000s was swift and abrupt.

"Allen Iverson went from 26 PPG, then two more NBA seasons, played for four teams, less than 90 total games, then out of the league," he said Tuesday on "First Things First."

"If Russell Westbrook continues to be in denial about what he can and can't do, and what is actually valuable contributions to an NBA team in 2022, and where he falls into it, he's going to be on that same path. This is to me less about the Lakers and more about Russ — a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the 40 greatest players in the last 50 years — what he's going to become, and how much time he has left if he does not recognize what he needs to become."

Chris Broussard concurred with Wright's Iverson take, adding that he believed Westbrook was referring to the media when he discussed preconceived notions about him going into the season.

"Iverson was obviously a phenomenal, iconic, legend," Broussard asserted. "And Russ will be the same thing 30 years from now. We'll be talking about the guy that averaged a triple-double for four seasons. But Iverson, like Russ, played a certain way. They weren't built to be role players. Everything was built around both. He's going to have trouble going somewhere and being a role player.

"I think when he talked about narratives being created about him before the season, he was talking about the media. And he's right: Most of the media, including me, thought it was a bad fit, and it wouldn't work. I think he felt like that was already put out there, ‘so when I get there, once we started losing, it was all put on me.'" 

Skip Bayless called Westbrook "delusional."

"In all my years of watching every sport very closely, I have never, ever seen a player as defiantly delusional as this player," Bayless stated on "Undisputed." "At times, it gets flat-out sad. This was the ultimate postseason finger-point, blame, deflect. This was pointing fingers at everything and everybody except the man in the mirror."

Shannon Sharpe agreed.

"Have you ever seen a more delusional athlete in your life than Russell Westbrook?" he asked Bayless. "Russ never had an issue with any other coaches because they didn’t hold you accountable for your terrible play. So because Frankie V was trying to hold you accountable, you didn't like him!"