Healthy Hollywood: Russell Westbrook’s Big-Hearted Play!

Oklahoma City Thunder point guard and NBA style star Russell Westbrook seen reading to kids (The Russell Westbrook Why Not? Foundation)

Basketball fans know Russell Westbrook for his fierce moves on the court as a point guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Besides his flashy style on and off the court, this sports superstar likes to score one for the kids. 

Healthy Hollywood loves to discover successful people who never forget to be grateful and are always willing to give back. After all, a generous, kind-heart benefits all of us.

As I learned yesterday from a publicist friend, Russell is one of those guys. The basketball star created The Russell Westbrook Why Not? Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting community-based education and family service programs. While, also, encouraging young people to believe in themselves.

This week, as part of his push to help young kids get educated, he opened up his first Russell Reading room at an elementary school in his Oklahoma community. He gave each of the 450 kids a book to jumpstart their reading and challenged the kids to get reading.

“I believe education is the simplest and most direct path towards a better life, so I want to not only motivate these kids to read and get involved in their education, but also to provide them with tools necessary to successfully meet my challenge,” explain Westbrook.

Russell’s Reading Challenge is part of Scholastic’s national Read 100,000 which encourages kids to read and log 100,000 minutes. Russell challenged over 75,000 students of the 147 metro Oklahoma City school to start reading.

For more on Russell’s charity, check out www.rwwhynotfoundation.org

— Terri MacLeod