How tall is Russell Westbrook?

Russell Westbrook's height: 6′4″ on the NBA's books

The NBA lists Russell Westbrook at 6′4″ (193 cm) and 200 pounds (91 kg), the figures shown on his NBA.com profile from his final season with the Sacramento Kings. This site uses that listing, the value at the top of this page; Wikidata carries 194 cm, a difference of a centimeter that is a rounding artifact rather than a real disagreement. Some references give 6′3″, the height Westbrook reached as a high school senior, so you will see both numbers in circulation.

The most reliable of these is the NBA's figure. Since the 2019–20 season, the league has required teams to submit physician-certified heights taken without shoes, as reported by CBS Sports and NBC Sports at the time. Westbrook's NBA listing has been 6′4″ under that rule, so it reflects a barefoot measurement rounded to the nearest inch.

The late growth spurt that changed his career

Westbrook's height story is one of the clearest examples of how a late growth spurt can transform a basketball future. According to his Wikipedia biography, he entered Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, California, as a point guard who stood only 5′8″ and weighed 140 pounds, though he already had size 14 feet, often a sign of growth still to come. He did not start on varsity until his junior year and received his first college recruiting letter only in the summer before his senior year.

That same summer, he reached his adult height of about 6′3″. In his senior season he averaged 25.1 points, 8.7 rebounds and 3.1 steals and led Leuzinger to a 25–4 record, and after his growth, college programs that had overlooked him took notice. UCLA signed him, and he spent two seasons there, mostly as a defensive spark off the bench in his first year before breaking out as a sophomore.

Growing roughly seven inches during high school, and doing much of it late, left Westbrook with an unusual set of skills. He developed as a small guard, learning to handle the ball and compete against bigger players, then suddenly had the size and leaping ability to play above the rim. The result was a player with a guard's handle and a forward's rebounding instincts.

Height and the triple-double

Westbrook's defining statistical achievement is the triple-double, and his height is a big part of why it is so remarkable. Guards of 6′4″ are expected to score and pass, but not to rebound at the rate of forwards and centers. Westbrook averaged a triple-double for an entire season four times, one of only three players ever to do it once. He finished his career as the NBA's all-time leader in triple-doubles with 209, and in November 2025 he passed Jason Kidd to set the record for most career rebounds by a guard.

The table shows the career triple-double leaders and their heights, using this site's figures and the totals reported at Westbrook's retirement.

Westbrook and Jason Kidd are the shortest players on the list, and Kidd's career total is barely half of Westbrook's. Jokić and Magic Johnson, at 208 cm and 206 cm, had a natural size advantage on the glass. Westbrook, giving up more than 10 cm to those two, got his rebounds through anticipation, explosive leaping and effort, often grabbing a defensive rebound and immediately pushing the ball up the floor himself.

In the 2016–17 season he averaged a triple-double, set the single-season record with 42, breaking Oscar Robertson's 1962 mark of 41, and won the MVP award. That season he also scored a career-high 58 points in a game. In April 2019 he became only the second player, after Wilt Chamberlain, to record a 20-point, 20-rebound, 20-assist game.

Westbrook next to teammates and rivals

Westbrook played for the Thunder, Rockets, Wizards, Lakers, Clippers, Nuggets and Kings. The table compares him with notable teammates and peers using this site's figures.

The Kevin Durant partnership defined Westbrook's Oklahoma City years. With James Harden, the three reached the 2012 NBA Finals, where they lost to Miami. Durant was nearly 18 cm taller, and the two formed one of the league's most athletic duos for eight seasons. The James Harden reunion in Houston in 2019–20 paired two guards within a couple of centimeters of each other, both of whom had won MVP awards.

The Chris Paul trade of July 2019 swapped two very different point guards. Paul, about 10 cm shorter, played a controlled, mid-range game; Westbrook played at full speed and attacked the rim. Few trades have exchanged two guards of the same generation with such contrasting styles and sizes.

Derrick Rose, the first pick in the 2008 draft in which Westbrook went fourth, is about 2 cm shorter in the site's data. The two were the most explosive point guards of their era, and both won MVP awards, Rose in 2011 and Westbrook in 2017.

Playing above the rim at 6′4″

Westbrook's athleticism was his trademark. He dunked far more often than most guards of his era, and his explosiveness let him finish over centers far taller than himself. At 6′4″ with long arms and an elite vertical leap, he could reach well above the rim in transition, and his speed with the ball made him almost impossible to stop in the open floor.

That style also shaped his evolution. In his later years, as he moved into a sixth-man and veteran role with the Clippers, Nuggets and Kings, he leaned more on his rebounding, passing and pace than on scoring. In January 2026, in his final season, he passed Oscar Robertson for the most career points by a point guard in NBA history and moved into 15th on the all-time scoring list; a month later he passed 27,000 career points. In that last season with Sacramento he started 58 of 64 games and averaged 15.2 points and 6.7 assists, according to the AP.

The 2008 draft class by height

Westbrook's draft class produced an unusually long list of durable NBA players, and lining them up by height shows where he fit. The figures below are this site's, with each player's draft position.

Westbrook was the tallest of the class's leading guards, but only by a few centimeters over Rose, Gordon and Dragić. Serge Ibaka, taken 24th, became his Thunder teammate and rim protector, about 16 cm taller. What separated Westbrook from the other guards was not size but the way he used it: none of the others rebounded at anything close to his rate, and none came near his 209 triple-doubles.

What the triple-double record says about guard size

Rebounding is the statistic most tightly linked to height, because the tallest players are closest to the rim when a shot misses. That is why the career rebounding leaderboard is dominated by centers and power forwards. Westbrook's career rebounding total, the highest ever for a guard, is therefore the clearest evidence of how far effort and leaping can offset size. When he passed Jason Kidd's mark in November 2025, he did it as a player listed at the same 6′4″ as Kidd, but with nearly two decades of nightly crashes into crowds of taller players behind him.

Retirement in August 2026

Westbrook announced his retirement on August 12, 2026, with a social media video narrated by actor Michael B. Jordan in which he did not speak, the Associated Press reported. ESPN reported that he had received offers from the Kings and the Wizards before deciding to retire. Thunder general manager Sam Presti called him "the ultimate competitor." He finished as a nine-time All-Star, two-time scoring champion, three-time assists leader, back-to-back All-Star Game MVP and member of the NBA's 75th Anniversary Team, and he won Olympic gold with the United States in 2012.

Compared with the average American man

Westbrook was born in 1988. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration estimates that American men born in 1976 averaged about 177.5 cm and those born in 1996 about 177.1 cm.

Westbrook is about 15 to 16 cm (6 inches) taller than the average American man of his generation, which places him beyond the 97th percentile nationally. The comparison with his freshman self is even more striking: at 5′8″ he was actually shorter than the average adult American man, and he grew about 20 cm in a few years. You can explore the American distribution on our United States average height page.

Weight and build

The NBA lists Westbrook at 200 pounds. Some references, including Wikidata, carry a slightly lower figure of about 87 kg (192 pounds); this site uses the NBA's 200 pounds (91 kg). Either way, he was a muscular, compact guard who used strength to absorb contact on drives and fight for rebounds against bigger players. His 140-pound freshman frame filled out dramatically through high school, college and his early NBA years, a gain of roughly 60 pounds between his freshman listing and his NBA listing.

Seeing Westbrook's height side by side

To see Westbrook next to Durant, Chris Paul or yourself, use the main height comparison tool, which displays figures at true scale. Good comparisons include Westbrook next to Jokić, which shows how much size he gave up while chasing the triple-double record, and Westbrook next to Derrick Rose, his 2008 draft classmate. For exact gaps in centimeters and inches, the height difference calculator converts any pair of heights, and it is a good way to check how the 193 cm NBA listing and the 194 cm reference figure change a comparison. Another revealing pairing is Westbrook next to his 5′8″ freshman self: the roughly 21 cm he grew in high school is about the same as the gap between an average American man and a 6′6″ NBA wing such as Kobe Bryant or Devin Booker. For more athletes and public figures, browse the celebrity heights hub.